As more of your business comes from online sources, it becomes important to protect your Web assets from being plagiarized by less scrupulous and otherwise lazy sales associates. Here is how you can easily and affordably put some serious teeth into the copyright notice at the bottom of each of your Web pages.

For example, top online producer Alice Held of www.come2az.com has had her proprietary and very profitable cactus-themed Web content used almost verbatim without permission more than once. This can be very frustrating especially if you have spent the time and effort Alice has in creating a unique winning Web site.

Now there is an easy way to protect your virtual assets. Idea Register is a service of top domain name registrar GoDaddy.com. It allows you to easily and affordably (as of this writing US $89.95) register the copyright of your Web content with the US Trademark and Copyright Office.

So why would you want to use this service rather than just put a copyright notice on the bottom of each page of your site? While your site is typically considered copyrighted by putting the appropriate copyright notice on each page, there is no recourse from people who infringe on your material other than sending a nasty "Cease and Desist" letter. However, if your site is formally registered with the US Trademark and Copyright office, then you may be able to sue for damages, perhaps as much as $100,000 per occurrence plus attorney's fees. This gives your rights a great big set of teeth that will likely scare away the most audacious of online content predators.