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What’s your Web site worth?

An intellectual property lawyer urges firms to be aware of their Web sites’ IP value.

"When creating their Web sites, lawyers often times don't understand the added value they receive from their sites, besides the fact they are now present on the Internet," says Betty Tufariello, intellectual property lawyer and founder of the Mt. Sinai, NY firm, INTELLECTULAW™. "They don't appreciate what it is they have or the leverage it gives them."

So, what do they have? For starters, a Web presence provides a lawyer or firm with an opportunity to stand out from the crowd—a benefit Tufariello has enjoyed with her distinctive FindLaw^® personal and firm profiles. Moreover, even a no-frills Web site contains intellectual property that its owner should not ignore.

Tufariello spoke with us about her big-picture approach to the practice of intellectual property law, an approach that requires full awareness of a business's often-overlooked intellectual property.

Your personal profile on FindLaw seems more biographical than most. Why did you create it that way?

In my personal profile, I refer to myself in the first person because I'm talking to the client. The profile contains very little information about me as an attorney; it has a lot more information about me as a human being. It shows how I relate to my clients, what they mean to me, and how my practice is all about them. A marketing consultant looked at it and said, "Betty, you're living in the truth! You claim on your Web site that you're different. This makes you different. Let it run." And we did.

The way we practice law is very different from any other law firm in that we, in essence, partner with a very select group of clients so as to have a significant impact on their income and quality of life. And the way we do that is by first determining who they are as human beings. Who are you? What are you doing in your life? Why do you have this business? Where are you going? What is the status of your business? What market share do you have? We ask them what their goals are—their short-term goals, their mid-term goals, and their long-term goals. Then we ask them what obstacles they anticipate hitting in the process of achieving those goals. Once we understand who they are both personally and professionally, we then tailor an intellectual property portfolio strategy that will help them overcome the obstacles and achieve the goals.

I’ll also ask: Is financing an issue? Have you exhausted all your sources for financing? A lot of them don't understand that trademarks, copyrights, and patents can actually be used to secure loans with banks.

Does that include elements of a firm's Web site?

Yes. That logo used on the Web site is intellectual property. It is a trademark. The law makes it very clear that anything you adopt in connection with your goods or services to help distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack and that will help consumers identify your services as coming from you is automatically a trademark. It could be a logo, a word, a name, a tagline, a color, a jingle, a shape. It could be anything you can possibly imagine.

In addition to trademarks, you also have copyrights. A Web site—the look and feel, the artistic expression of that Web site, the way it conveys information—is automatically copyrightable. Once the business registers the trademarks and copyrights, it can actually use them to secure financing or a credit line. Intellectual property helps law firms and other businesses to develop leverage, whether that leverage is to raise money or to bring better people on board.

Are there other ways a firm can derive value from the intellectual property in its Web site?

In the case of a merger or an acquisition, IP boosts the value of the company. So your asking price can really go higher. Intellectual property that increases the goodwill associated with your business is part of what they're going to buy. In addition, if your firm changes its logo or other intellectual property along the way, you don't necessarily need to abandon the old logo. You can take the old logo and actually license it out or sell it and generate another source of income. IBM did it. It increased its bottom line by quite a bit, just by licensing out all of its old intellectual property. It had all these patents, trademarks and copyrights sitting in a drawer. IBM increased its income by simply putting them to use. Most people don't know what they can do with their intellectual property until they try.

What should a prudent law firm do to take advantage of the intellectual property of its site?

Trademarks and copyrights must be registered in order to be enforced nationwide. Copyrights in particular: The law specifically says that absent a copyright registration, you cannot sue for copyright infringement. And if you don't have a copyright registration within three months of the day of publication, you cannot collect statutory damages. Copyright statutory damages are a great remedy because you don’t have to prove lost sales. If you have not filed for a copyright registration within three months of the date of publication of the copyright, then in order for to get money out of an infringer, you have to prove that you lost sales.

But law firms are already aware of this, right?

Lawyers are the worst business people on earth—period. Just like doctors, lawyers don't think of themselves, and they don't think about treating or taking care of themselves or their practices. So they don’t engage in the due diligence necessary to protect themselves and their businesses and to maximize their value. Furthermore, they don’t take the time to fully educate themselves. Consequently, there are loads of practitioners who say you don't have to register a copyright! Really? Come, let me tell you the stories of how many clients I had to file expedited copyright applications for, just so that I could sue to protect their rights.

So it is very important that when creating their Web sites with FindLaw, lawyers take the time to understand the added value they receive and the leverage they can enjoy—both personally and professionally.