Online Intellectual Property: Protecting your online asset

I've checked the forums and could not find a thread that discussed how to secure your Online Intellectual Property so I thought I'd open one up . (posted here altough it might not quite suit the particular forum. Perhaps an IP forum could be opened?)

Given my lack of experience / knowledge in this area I would like to explore the following angles:
1. What Generic / universal protection if any do all website have?
2. What further steps can I take to further secure my IP?

• Passively by recording data from my website

• Actively by submitting patent, trademarks etc and where to submit those to? (especially when it comes to domain names)

3. What are legally in the green when we are talking "hostile" take over of domain names for people who have not protected their domains?

I admit that this is an "unpopular" thing to ask for but this is business and would Microsoft, Coca cola or any other big time company do it? I'd say so. It also helps to protect yourself if you know what might happen to you?

Ladies and gentlemen The word is yours.
Regards Christoffer

Im not a lawyer, but there isn't really much I found out there that can protect your IP - at least the stuff hanging out in the public domain. Sure, you can protect your IP from internal influences (venture partners, employees, etc) thru Non-Disclosures but even those aren't foolproof.

The moment your great website (and idea) goes live, someone can copy it.

Remember Goto.com who invented the Pay-Per-Click method? Fast forward today, and every major search engine now uses it.

I've had my business copied dozens of times. You can't patent ideas.

You can protect service and trademarks (Thru Trademark).
You can protect content and original works of art (Thru Copyright)

As for someone visiting your website, examining the concept, and duplicating it -- there is really nothing out there to stop it.

I made a professional web site for my father-in-law's tile setting business about 8 years ago, including a "legal" page and a copyright phrase on each page. Several years after that a customer told my father-in-law that someone else had an exact duplicate web site, except for the name/number of the company, and gave him the URL. I looked it up and couldn't believe it ... They had copied page after page, word for word from my creation - even the "legal" page I added was copied (talk about ignorance). I sent the author a stern email AND cc'd the owner of the company the web site was for,and a few days later the content was removed and I got an apologetic response.

It wasn't a huge deal as my father-in-law's company was a local business in Texas, while the company the rip-off web site was for was located in Ohio (and was another ma-n-pa local business). But still - the nerve of some people.