Bug Inc Paper

Bug Inc. Paper

Question 4:

BUG has come to you for advice regarding its international expansion. BUG wants to sell its products via the Internet. BUG is concerned about privacy, security, and infringement issues. BUG is also concerned because a company that buys famous or company name domain names seems to own the rights to the domain name BUG.com. The company is willing to sell the domain name for a high price. Advise BUG on any international conflict of law issues that might possibly affect the company. Be detailed in your response.

BUG.com will face many issues while doing business on the Internet. One of these concerns will be privacy. BUG.com will sell its products to online customers all over the world. It will be important for BUG.com to protect the privacy of its customers who will be using many different payment methods. This information, along with sensitive business information will need to be protected. Many online businesses use software such as pay pal for customers to make payment on purchases. This allows the company to be secure in payment for their merchandise, and allows buyers to be confident in the security of their payment methods.

Security is another issue Internet businesses face. The larger a company grows, the more security protection will be of a concern. Outside threats will include hackers, viruses, and worms. Once a hacker breaks into a system, all files kept on that computer are at the hands of the hacker. Personal information, financial information, credit card information, and client lists are now in the hands of the hacker to use at his or her discretion. Some of the larger companies hire full-time network security, but this can be very costly and smaller companies do not have the means to afford this. It will be very important for these companies to invest in proper security software to protect themselves as well as their customers.

Federal laws provide protection for things such as property rights, patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Anyone who infringes on these can be held liable for damages (Henry, 2007, chap. 9). Many companies are set apart because of trade secrets. Trade secrets consist of formulas, patterns, customer list, and even designs. Many trade secrets cannot be patented so the Uniform Trade Secrets Act is used to give statutory protection to the trade secrets of their owners and cannot be infringed upon (Henry, chap. 9).

A domain name identifies a company's website. For a small fee, anyone can register your domain name. Unfortunately, many .com domain names, such as BUG.com are already registered. There are options that BUG.com can take such as using .net, .org, info, .biz, and many more. BUG.com will need to make sure that they will not be infringing on the trademark rights of someone else's domain, which will result in a lawsuit. Another solution