A website becomes a key tool for an e-commerce firm today in the age of digital marketing. They serve as a conduit to customers for the promotion of their company. However, as digital marketing and web commerce become more popular, there is a greater chance that others may copy your website's same "look and feel," as well as some of its contents.

A question must have arisen in your mind right away: what are the elements that are safeguarded, and how can they be protected? 

What elements of your website are protected or can be protected?

• There are various parts of the website which may be copyright protected. The patent may be protected or protected by utility models by e-commerce systems, technological Internet tools and/or search engines.

• Software that also includes the HTML code used is likewise protected.

• Designs of the website

• Databases

• The trademark rules also protect your corporate logos, name, domain names and similar items.

• In the form of industrial designs graphic symbols created via computers, GUIs (Graphic UIs), websites and also web pages are protected.

• The source code, algorithms, programmes and any other secretive parts of your website can be secured in your business secret, provided that it is not made public and sufficient efforts have been made to safeguard it.

How to protect your website?

When the cyber world is vulnerable to the hacking predators, it becomes an implied obligation on you to protect your asset through necessary precautions:

1. Legal Protection: At the exact time that you slept over your rights, half of the legal war was gone. So protecting your intellectual property (IP) is the most critical method. You ought to: SO to safeguard them:

a. Register your brand,

b. Where feasible, register the domain name,
c. Save the website and contents on copyright,

d. Create the legal duty to keep your workers or anybody else confidential to you secret.

2. Public knowledge of the fact that your content is protected: People are commonly misunderstood that many materials publicly available on the websites may be utilised freely and indiscriminately. It is therefore crucial to remember that your material is secured.

a. You may use symbols like ® to designate your trademarks and © to protect copyright, 

b. using a watermark to enter digital material into the document.

c. You may also use a timestamp. This is a tool connected to the digital content that shows the condition of the content at a certain point in time.

3. Let people know how they can make use of the content: On every page of your website you can put a declaration of copyright which clearly stipulates the terms your firm uses. This is to teach the viewer what to do with this page.

4. Controlling the access and use of your website: The security of your web site's data may be utilised to restrict its misuse by technological means such as encryption, conditional access systems and online agreements.

Who is the owner of your Website’s IP rights?

A website is a component combination that belongs to different people. For example, a website is a collage of a photo of someone who owns the copyright over it or browser or graphics. For a company to own the contents of the website, it is not obligatory. It is vital to know what rights you have on your website parts or what rights you have.

Case Study:

The California District Court, in Media.net Advertising FZ-LLC v. Netseer Inc., asked whether HTML is copyright-conserving or not, even if the appearance and sense is not so. In this case, the plaintiff was an online supplier of contextual promotional services who initiated an infringement lawsuit for duplicating the HTML for his own search results page. In this case, the plaintiff was a customer. Court decided, if a person creates the HTML and includes significant innovation, that it can be copyrighted. However, the website's appearance and feel may not be taken for granted, because HTML can be programmed differently to look and feel the same way on the web.

Who becomes the owner if someone is paid to develop the website?

It is a normal practice for certain external professionals to create your website. You pay for the creation of the website and externalise the product. In this situation, there is a doubt as to who holds the copyright. There are two folds to give the solution to this. In the first situation, if an employee for their employer develops this site and, in the second case, you use an external contractor to outsource the contents of this site.

Primarily, when your employee develops the website, you typically have the copyright unless you and your employee have agreed otherwise. But in the second situation, it's slightly different. You may be puzzled to find that even if you pay the amount of labour you outsourced, you will not be the website owner. They are independent contractors and own their own IP rights through the website and the components on which they are built. You have just a right to utilise your website in our website. 

You can nevertheless conclude an agreement with that independent contractor to transfer all your rights, although in unusual cases these are done again. For example, your website was developed by an independent website designer and there is no transfer agreement between you and the developer. Therefore, web designers are responsible for their copyright. You desire to amend your website and you must be authorised by the web designer involved according to the applicable legislation.