If you have spent a lot of time and money on the digital appearance of your brand and you want to make sure no one tries to duplicate your hard work, it is natural that you might want to know if and how you can trademark a website. After all, you can definitely trademark a word mark or symbol that represents your business to protect your defining visual elements from other people who may want to use the same elements. But can you trademark an entire website’s visual appearance? The short answer to that question is no. Lots of modern websites are based on similar templates and can end up looking quite a lot like one other. While you can likely copyright the content on your website to protect against other people copying it, websites cannot function as trademarks because they contain a large amount of varied content that changes often. Trademarks are distinctive and unique words and images that represent your brand and your brand alone. The Nike “swoosh,” Starbucks mermaid and McDonald’s “M” are all good examples. Even if you have a distinctive website, it can’t be trademarked.
All About Trademarks
Trademarks are very common in business, and they offer great amounts of protection to businesses that rely in part on their visual identifying marks and words to maintain their brand image. Without this protection, anyone would legally be able to use a word or logo for their own gain. Trademarks also signal to customers that they are buying the products they think they are. If they know that one brand with a specific trademark is trustworthy, they can feel secure that the trademark will always represent reliability and not have to worry that a less trustworthy company is using the trademark to trick people.
Protecting Your Website
After reading all this, you may be wondering why especially distinctive websites cannot be trademarked. After all, they share some elements with trademarkable words and images. They are both visual, they both represent a brand and they both are meant to distinguish a company from competitors. Luckily, there is a way to protect your website, though not by trademarking it.
Trade Dress: What It Does and Doesn’t Cover
The concept of “Trade Dress” may be the way to protect a particularly unique and personalized website design. Trade dress, outside of the digital realm, refers to the whole effect surrounding a service or product. This can include packaging for a product or the appearance of a building for a restaurant. Think about the distinctive design elements of a Chipotle or McDonald’s. These are some examples of what is considered trade dress. As it applies to a website, your design would have to be very distinctive to be considered trade dress, or it could be a site, like the Google homepage, that has become distinctive over time due to familiarity. Also, you cannot claim the protection of trade dress for elements that are purely functional, because this would prevent other competitors from using pivotal elements that are key for functional use of something.
What Should You Do If You Believe Your Design Was Copied?
Another element that has to be present when considering whether a trade dress protection infringement has happened is the similarity between two sites. If they only mildly resemble one another (same layout, similar icons, etc.) there might not be much that can be done. If two sites have so much in common that people could get them confused, then it may be a good idea to contact a lawyer. No one wants their hard work to be stolen, whether that work is a logo, packaging design or website layout. While you cannot trademark a site, the idea of trade dress might give you the security you are looking for. Consider the nature of your site so you know if you have a good chance of winning a case beforehand.
Legal Disclaimer
The content on our website is only meant to provide general information and is not legal advice. We make our best efforts to make sure the information is accurate, but we cannot guarantee it. Do not rely on the content as legal advice. For assistance with legal problems or for a legal inquiry please contact you attorney.