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Blogging Safely and Avoiding Infringement of Intellectual Property Tips

Now-a-days, becoming a blogger is an attainable career for almost anybody. With the right amount of passion, drive, knowledge, and interesting content, you can blog your perspective. Whether you’re providing information, research, opinion, or entertainment, it’s likely you will spend a lot of time and energy making high-quality posts. However, as you attract your worldwide audience on the internet, you should be aware of intellectual property (IP) and the impact it can make on your blog.

Dealing with Copyrights and Trademarks

Copyright or intellectual property is legal protection of a created work. For bloggers, that means your blog posts and other content you create for your blog — like eBooks, music, videos, software, podcasts, and photos — provided that you’re the creator of it are protected.

In the simplest of terms, make sure that the contents of your blog are not infringing upon someone else’s content. To ensure this, before you begin blogging you must check to make sure that your logo, name, and tagline are not infringing upon the trademark of another company or person. It is important to make sure that your photos, comments, and textual content are not infringing material, or you could be making yourself vulnerable to legal action.

As soon as your writing, photos, and overall content is recorded, a copyright is made. It is important to keep a documented record of when you create your content. This will come in handy if you ever need to prove that you created the work and the date you created it on. Although you aren’t required to file for an official copyright registration, you may still choose to do so. This is because you can’t pursue for copyright infringement unless you’ve officially registered your work. This essentially means, without registration, there can be no legal action.

If another person does infringe upon your blog content, many social media sites and websites provide take-down procedures. The procedures consist of removing the infringing content by having proof that there is infringement upon your IP rights, trademark, and copyrights.

Using Images and Public Domains

While blogging, if you plan to use an image from google rather than a photograph you’ve taken yourself, make sure that you check the terms of the site you are using to ensure the picture does not infringe copyright. Sometimes to use an image that already has a copyright you must pay for it. To avoid spending money on the images and content you include in your blog, investigate using public domains instead. If you do not claim to have created the image yourself, there are no regulations when using images from a public domain.

Logos

To what extent are you allowed to use other people’s logos and trademarks? Well, the answer is dependent on what you are using in your blog. For example, if you are thinking about including brand logos of popular global companies, our recommendation is, don’t. It is most likely that these popular brand logos are protected by trademark registration and copyright. Meaning, if you use another brand’s logo, you are potentially in danger of copyright infringement.

However, if you wish to just reference a trademark in your blog, such as “Amazon”, it is unlikely you will be accused of trademark infringement. This is because generally, trademark infringement can be the cause of consumer confusion. If you plan to just reference a trademark, it is unlikely there will be consumer or viewer uncertainty. Although, it is best to avoid leading consumers to believe your blog is connected to or supported by these trademark brands if they are not as you will be at risk for trademark infringement.

If you have questions or are unsure of what infringement of IP is, get in touch with the SnapDragon Team. We are here to help!


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