Legal Protection of Trademarks in the Internet

The purpose of this work is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the use of trademarks in the Internet and the ways to provide protection for violated rights of trademark owners. The main objectives of the paper are: 1) to analyze different ways to use trademarks in the Internet; 2) to study the scientific approaches of Russian and foreign researchers to the limits of the allowed use of a trademark by a non-owner in the Internet, and to analyze relevant judicial practice; 3) to consider the possible ways of granting protection to the trademark owners whose rights were violated; 4) to analyze problems of law enforcement, which the owner of a trademark may face while applying for the protection of violated rights; 5) to consider possible amendments to the legislation on protection of trademark rights in the Internet. The following conclusions are formulated in the paper. Firstly, in spite of the fact that a large number of cases on domain disputes was elaborated, a unified approach to their resolution is still lacking. Secondly, today there is no unified approach to the ways of allowed use of trademarks as keywords of contextual advertising, in HTML-code, in the content of sites. Thirdly, the use of foreign experience of trademark protection in the Internet may help to adapt the Russian legislation to the needs of the IT/IP sphere, to make it more efficient. Fourthly, not only is it necessary to protect the already violated right to a trademark, but also to prevent such violations. Fifthly, despite the existence of controversial legal opinions, the analysis of the judicial practice has shown its significant development in recent years.