1. Be safe by being original, and use contracts for all outsourcing. "Always err on the side of creating your own content," says Marylee Jenkins, an attorney with the New York City office of Arent Fox PLLC. In addition to eliminating the risk of treading on someone else's intellectual property rights, such a course has a more practical benefit as well. "You're the best person to know what the business really is," says Jenkins, who specializes in Internet copyright law. However, there is one potential issue with the get-it-done-yourself approach. It stems from what Jenkins calls a "conundrum of copyright law" — that is, Web site work that is outsourced. The creator of the Web site, and not necessarily the business commissioning the work, owns the copyright, she says. If the Web site developer happens to be a direct employee of the business, no problem. It's understood in the law that what employees produce belongs to the employer. But when the work for a Web site is farmed out to a consultant or contractor, there's a risk. In those cases, ownership of the work needs to be spelled out very clearly and correctly in a contract. Business owners should consider themselves at risk "unless there's a written agreement [with the contractor or consultant] that says, 'Anything you create for me, I own,'" says Lisa Dunner, who runs a law firm, Dunner Law, in Washington, D.C. She says such contracts should contain the description "work for hire," the legal term for such an arrangement.

2. Follow the steps to protect your material with copyrights. Once ownership has been secured, there are several steps business operators can take to prevent third parties from — legally — lifting content from the site, or at least without giving credit where it's due, Danner says. Dunner also advocates having a privacy policy that details how the company plans to use information solicited from users of the site (see this related article on tips for developing a privacy policy). She cautions, however, that "if you don't adhere to your own policy, you can get into big trouble."

3. Know that pirates often pay a price. You also can get in big trouble if, rather than creating original Web content, you regard other businesses' Web sites as a kind of smorgasbord to pick and choose from. There's a right way and a wrong way to go about this, and if you opt for the wrong way, it could hit you in the wallet. "You have to respect other people's intellectual property rights," Jenkins says. The safest course, she says, is to review the site's terms of use and abide by them. The most reckless is to lift material wholesale without permission. A generally acceptable alternative is for a business to provide its users another site's material simply by linking to it. A consequence of that is to increase traffic at the other site, and usually that's regarded as a good thing. There is one linking wrinkle that is frowned upon, however. Called "framing," it's a technique whereby the linked material is made to appear as though it resides on the Web site of the business that is doing the linking. That is not regarded as a good thing, either by businesses being pirated from or by the courts.

4. Learn the rules on copyrights and trademarks. In cases of disputes, Dunner says, a court will look at all the steps a business owner took to identify the origin of the content. "Make an honest effort to make it clear who owns the material," she says, "because the better it looks for a business trying to do that." Businesses that can't prove a good faith effort face stiff penalties. U.S. copyright law stipulates damages of not less than $750 and not more than $30,000 per copyright infringement. When it can be proved the infringement was done willfully, the maximum increases to $150,000 per incident. It's easier to follow the rules when you know them. Two federal government Web sites — the U.S. Copyright Office (www.copyright.gov) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov) — are must stops for business owners who are managing or considering launching a Web site.