The development and the advancement in the internet and technologies have led to an increase in online multimedia businesses and enterprises. It is the internet that has contributed to revolutionary technology by boosting empowerment in the consumers and their businesses. With the phenomenon of globalization, the internet has become a dominant platform for companies, which thereby use it for the purpose of selling products online. In terms of referring intellectual property rights in compliance with the industry of electronic commerce, then it can be stated that the domain deals with the rules for securing and enforcing legal rights on the inventions, designs, and artistic works, and in the present digital era, the access to any forms of copyrighted work has been made simple and accessible. Even the introduction of the internet has created opportunities and advantages, but then at the same time has also increased risks of infringement, counterfeiting, and others. The extension of protection to the businesses of e-commerce through intellectual property rights has been posed as a serious challenge.

In recent years, the introduction of the businesses of electronic commerce has contributed to high rates for increasing the global economy. Almost all the developed and developing countries have adopted electronic and online transactions and people have also adopted online mechanisms as the most suitable option in today’s busy world. The companies such as Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, and many others are some of the successful business entities of electronic commerce. However, the area of intellectual property rights has been referred to as the most neglected in terms of e-commerce but is the most essential and significant one for its protection. Intellectual property rights and electronic commerce are complementary to each other. The products, services, websites, and others require intellectual property rights for their success and for preventing them from any kind of misuse and exploitation.

However, with the rapid increase in technology and improvements in various sectors, there have been various instances wherein the role of Intellectual Property rights has been expanded to electronic commerce. This can be discussed below:

i.The intellectual property rights extend their protection for safeguarding and protecting the business interests of the company from any kind of unfair competition and violation. For example, protection has been granted to software through patents and copyrights from any kind of illegal use and exploitation. Secondly, copyright has been extended and has been of vast importance to the media and entertainment industry for the purpose of protecting their films, movies, and songs.

ii.The protection has been granted to the manufacturing industries involved in the manufacturing of software, chips, designs, and others. For example, the automobile sector has adopted the mechanisms of patent and design protection in order to save their designs from being copied or duplicated.

iii.Almost every business is online and electronic which involves patent and product licensing. These are the licensing agreements that are protected by the different realms of intellectual property rights.

iv.The domain names of various electronic commerce sites are protected through trademarks.

There are various constituents that have been provided protection through Intellectual Property Rights for electronic commerce. These are:

i.The search engines, websites, software, and other links have been provided protection under the realm of patents and utility models, and copyright.

ii.The content on the websites in any electronic commerce site, whether any articles, blogs or journals have also been provided protection under copyright and patents.

iii.The intellectual property rights also extend their protection through trademarks by providing protection to the brand names, logos.