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No. 179 Managing Intell. Prop. 101 (2008)
Police Your Marks in a Wiki World

handle is hein.journals/manintpr179 and id is 101 raw text is: Police your marks in a wiki world Wikipedia has become a key source of information for internet users around the world. But it also poses dangers for trade mark owners. Joshua Jarvis explains why R ecent court and Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) decisions highlight the importance of trade mark owners periodically monitoring and, if necessary, updating trade mark information on Wikipedia, the community-authored online encyclopaedia. As the name implies, Wikipedia is a wiki - a collaborativekipedia, the popular website that allows anyone, using a web browser, to add to, modify or delete content online encyclopaedia, has that has been placed on the site, including the work of other authors. Wikipedia become a major source of specifically allows even non-registered public users to add encyclopaedia entries and information for internet modify existing entries. This communal structure, along with a user-friendly interface users across He glbe. The and speedy, well-maintained internet servers, has led to several important corollaries. combination of the web- site's impressive reach and the fact that it is Wikidly widespread comprised entirely of user-generated content First, Wikipedia is popular, and is quickly gaining acceptance as the go-to website for means that it warrants the attention of trade fact gathering. One can type almost any noun into Google's search engine, and one mark owners, who are often unawa that of the first search results to be returned will be a link to the Wikipedia page dedicat- their trae marks may be featured on the site. ed to the query. Second, Wikipedia is massive - at the time of writing, there are more Furthermore, the US Tademark Trial and than 9.2 million articles on Wikipedia, of which more than 2.2 million articles are in Appeal Board has begun to accept Wikipedia English. As a result, it is exceedingly likely that there are entries discussing your com- entris as evitence in trade mark hearings, pany's valuable trade marks, if not entries dedicated to a well-known mark or marks evidence of the site's increasing credibility. owned by your company. Third, Wikipedia entries are constantly changing as con- This artie provides advice to elp IP owners tributors shape them to conform to personal knowledge and - if contributors are con- Monitor their marks effectivel on Wikipedia scientious - reliable secondary sources. Finally, the opportunity for abuse and sabo- to ensure that their IP rights are not being tage is considerable. Even assuming articles are well-researched and accurate, vandals abused. and saboteurs can edit entries as easily as anyone else, and while such defacement is generally discovered and remedied quickly, things can slip through the cracks. Wikis in the courtroom One might believe that such characteristics would render Wikipedia entries inherently unreliable and inadmissible as a matter of law, but this is not necessarily the case. In In re IP Carrier Consulting Group, 2007 TTAB LEXIS 66 (TTAB June 18 2007), the appli- Wikipedia editing tips * Wikipedia frowns on non-standard English text formatting, including use of the (r) or (tm) symbols within articles. Review the Wikipedia Manual of Style for trade marks at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manua I-ofStyle_%28trade marks%29. * The ability to edit anything - and to say whatever you want - can be tempting. Edit the page only as much as is necessary to make information accurate. Bloated, unnec- essary, and/or self-serving language is quickly identified by Wikipedia editors and deleted. Be aware of Wikipedia's guidelines regarding neutrality, located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutra Ipointof_view. Corroborate your claims with references. If you add a sentence that says XYZ(r) is a registered trade mark in the US and in over 50 countries worldwide, then add a reference to at least the US registration number. * When submitting a page edit, Wikipedia allows you to describe the nature of the change. Use this opportunity to explain to the Wikipedia community - especially those who have spent time athoring the page - why you are making this change. For exam- ple, noting XYZ's status as a registered trade mark. This makes it more likely that the modification will be accepted by the Wikipedia community, and especially previ- ous editors of the entry. * Wikipedia employs a robust tracking and monitoring system for its entries. Anyone can track who edited any Wikipedia entry, and when. Register an account with Wikipedia and make changes under that account name. Unregistered authors are logged by their IP addresses, which can allow other Wikipedia users to find out who edited the page. A company that edits its own information can come across as self- serving, and previous authors may be less likely to accept the changes to their work. The IP addresses of registered users, on the other hand, are concealed from most other users, If you anticipate significant editing of one or more entries, it would be wise to consider registering more than one account and distributing editing duties among them. Although the English version of Wikipedia has the most articles, you should bear in mind that there are versions of Wikipedia in several languages, and problem articles that you have identified in the English version may have foreign-language analogues. www.managingip.com May 2008 101

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