It is interesting that the New York Times would publish an article titled “Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal.” See The July 30, 2009 business story.
What is a truly fascinating development here is how web companies are now trying tie legacy data banks of highly personal information to online information in order to figure out how to get consumers to spend more money on products by constantly presenting to them highly focused relevant advertisements based upon their likes, dislikes, socio-economic profile, etc. Couple this with all of the innovative work being done in the field of predictive modeling and you have a prescription for producing something highly useful and beneficial on the one hand, to something that could be abused, or worse yet, used against individuals. If you have ever used Pandora, you will see a good use of predictive modeling.
Having done a great deal of research and work in the area of privacy, I am particularly sensitive to this aggregation of information. We dealt with a number of interesting and complicated issues long before the Internet age, and many of the issues we were researching then are relevant today. Suffice it to say, we each need to be cognizant that the advertisements presented to us are not the same as may be to our neighbor. So the next time you click on an advertisement, think about how you are leaving a breadcrumb trail of interests for the next marketer to exploit.

Starting June 13, 2009 Facebook users can create personalized URLs for their Facebook pages. http://www.facebook.com/username/ where “username” is the name that you register. These personalized URLs are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. The intention is that “friends” can go directly to your personalized URL.

Because this is just another avenue for infringers to try and steal trademarks from rightful owners, and since the law on this area is developing we are recommending that our clients immediately create accounts on facebook and register their trademarks as personalized URLs. For example, I have registered: http://www.facebook.com/WebTM. There is nothing particularly interesting at my facebook wall, but it is there.

So if you go and try and register your trademark as a personalized URL, and it is taken, Facebook is providing a means to complain by its “Notice of Intellectual Property Infringement (Non-Copyright Claim)”. If someone adopts your trademark as a personal URL on Facebook, report it immediately. Should you require any assistance in dealing with this, please contact me directly.

Welcome to the New WEBTM website. It is a work in process, but here it is.

It is built on exciting new Web 2.0 technology with WordPress as its foundation.