Finding a corporate name or slogan on the Internet is a cinch with the plethora of search engines to perform the task. But what about a company worried that its corporate logo is being misused in e-commerce, or artists worried about unauthorized use of their work online?
Short of coming across the image randomly, or finding it with a keyword search, there is no way to determine where a logo, an artist's copyrighted work, a Disney character, or any other non-text content is being displayed on the Web.
That is about to change. A San Francisco startup has announced plans to launch a search engine that can find images on the Web the way existing search engines locate words.
ImageLock says the search engine should be up and running by the end of the month.
The company also sells a service where it will regularly scour the Internet for images. It signed up its first customer, Federal Express, earlier this week.
Company officials tout their new service as a breakthrough, one that will help to tame the unregulated aspects of the Net and make it a place where people feel more comfortable posting intellectual property and conducting business.
"I think this will just be radical," Chairman Bennett Smith said in an interview with Reuters. "It will provide a new comfort level for people paranoid about the exchange of intellectual property on the Web."
ImageLock was one of several California-based start-up companies that made presentations to the Golden State Venture Capital conference last week in Napa, California.
Smith said expressions of interest have come from big companies, small art galleries, as well as independent photographers who display their work online.
"I think it will help people apply traditional copyright and trademark laws to the Internet," Smith said. "There is a frustration from a creator's perspective over how do they prevent their images from being taken."
Copyright© 1999 Reuters Limited.
