Academic Integrity in a Digital Age

We have recently seen the advancement of information technology and the speed of internet usage to advertise business products and services. This has raised the possibilities of trademark infringements over the internet. Likewise, competitors have been using the internet to misuse trademarks and paved the way to gain unfair advantage over the competitions. For instance, you may be using a search engine to search a certain company and end up seeing competitors link on the other side of the page of the search results.  Common forms of trademark misuse over the internet include cyber squatting, improper meta-tagging and unfair linking practices. Cyber squatting involves the purchase of another ones trademark as a domain name for the purpose of selling back to the owner of the right. The use of trademarks in such a way that it is visible over the internet but not to the reader is what we call meta-tagging. Where as unfair linking can be used to bypass the linked site's home page which is the primary source of advertising. These practices affect all kinds of businesses, from manufacturers of products, service providers to the software producers.