Some Internet and E-commerce Legal Perspectives Impacting the End User

摘要

This paper has dealt briefly with just two areas affecting businesses and end users in today's Web-based e-commerce arena: contractual matters and jurisdictional issues. Other important issues include matters dealing with advertising and intellectual property. With regard to advertising, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a working paper (Dot Com Disclosures, 2000) confirming that long-established advertising laws, regulations, and guidelines used in traditional media apply equally to online advertising. Even though the working paper cannot be regarded as law, it provides guidelines with respect to how the FTC views Web-based advertising. This means that deceptive or unfair advertising would be illegal and that all advertisement claims must have substantiation. With regard to intellectual property matters, the matter of trademarks was touched on briefly in the paper. However, there is muchmore to be investigated, i.e., trademark infringement, trademark dilution, invalid use and registration of domain names, improper linking, etc. End users obviously need to be vigilant as they not only surf the Net but conduct business on it.