Everything is much simpler now when it comes to shopping. It is as simple as getting online and a plethora of goods and services are right at your finger tips from buying groceries, paying bills, internet banking to getting your Christmas shopping done from the comfort of your living room. This is what is known as e-commerce this $230 billion dollar a year industry ("Entrepreneur- Exploring E-Commerce", 2012) is marred by many legal liabilities the biggest of them all is how to insure their and protect their intellectual property infringements, defamation and invasion of privacy (“Risky e-business,” 2002).
In the article “Risky e-business” (2002) it outlines the legal risks faced by e-commerce business and how difficult it is to find an insurance policy that will provide them the most amount of coverage thus protecting the company and its customers. Just like anything else in life there is insurance to cover almost anything just like there is insurance to cover your health, your vehicle and your home. E-commerce businesses also have insurance to protect them against some liabilities like transmitting copyrighted material without the copyrighters permission, there is insurance to protect businesses from infringing against another business’s trademark. The insurance policies currently available are not inclusive of everything for example the Standard Commercial general liability policy. This policy was drafted long before the internet was created and before the actualization of e-commerce businesses therefore this policy proves very inadequate when it comes to actually protecting intellectual property however, its coverage does not extend to the protection of intellectual property, but it will cover infractions such as defamation, invasion of privacy, hacking and viruses (“Risky e-business,” 2002).
Because of the inconsistencies in protecting businesses against intellectual property infringement policy makers are trying to find new and
References: Entrepreneur- Exploring E-Commerce. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/159680 Risky e-business. (2002, September). The Deal, (), . Retrieved from http://www.thedeal.com