Legal Protection of Means of Identification in the Internet

Master's thesis Name: “Legal Protection of Means of Identification in the Internet”. The subject of this work is methods and features of protecting company names, trademarks, service marks, appellations of origin, geographical indications, and commercial signs on the Internet. This work consists of an introduction, main part, presented in three chapters, conclusion and bibliography. The introduction presents the relevance of the topic; the practical significance of the work and the degree of scientific elaboration of the topic; the purpose and objectives of the study; the object, subject and methodology of the study. The first chapter describes the concept of “means of identification” and its correlation with the term “identification tools”. There are revealed functions and characteristic features of means of identification. Within the framework of this chapter, there are provided various classifications of means of identification. There is analyzed the issue of the possibility of providing legal protection to domain names. The second chapter describes all methods to use means of identification identified in the analysis of judicial practice. Particular attention is paid to the use of protected signs in Internet-advertising. There is analyzed the issue of the possibility to use trademark in relation to electronic resources or other materials that do not have a materialized form. This chapter also highlights the features of using means of identification in a digital sphere, in particular, the specifics of using a trademark in a domain name, in other addressing tools, in meta-tags and keywords. The third chapter is devoted to the analysis of the conditions and methods of protecting means of identification in case of violation on the Internet. Particular attention is paid to the criterion for consumers misleading in establishing violations of designation rights in the information environment. This chapter discusses the proportionality of the sanctions applied to the consequences of violations. Special attention is paid to the legal status of the information intermediary as the central figure for the protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet. In the conclusion, it is provided a list of conclusions made by the author during the study, as well as suggestions for resolving identified problems.