The idea of context-specific privacy is gaining a lot of cachet, so much so that the Obama administration features it as a major aspect of a proposed new Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. “Consumers have a right to expect that companies will collect, store and use personal information in a manner consistent with the context within which it’s collected.
The White House recently recommended a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, and the European Union is days away from requiring companies to get consent from website visitors before storing advertising cookies on their devices.
San Francisco civil rights advocates who are concerned about what they call domestic spying on the city’s Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities are celebrating new legislation signed into law on May 9.
US Senator Al Franken’s letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the US Justice Department requests for GPS location data from phone companies appears to be based on a flawed understanding of the law.
They can look like harmless errors: A misspelled name. A transposed number. A paid debt listed as past due. Mistakes on credit reports can inflict widespread damage. And because there are insufficient rules on how credit-reporting agencies must correct them, Americans are left virtually powerless to erase the mistakes.
By Talya Minsberg A new Israeli law prohibits fashion media and advertising from using Photoshop or models who fall below the World Health Organization’s standard for malnutrition. When a 14-year-old girl delivered a 25,000-signature petition this week to Seventeen asking them to curb their use of Photoshop, the magazine issued a press statement that congratulated the girl on her ambition but was conspicuously silent on changing their editorial practices.
So, culturally and historically, the reason women care so much about fashion is that until very recently, we weren’t allowed professional, legal or vocal ways of expressing ourselves. Fashion was a way of articulating our feelings about ourselves.
Is it “misappropriation of a trade secrets” to contact each person who follows an ex-employer’s Social Media profile for purposes of promoting a competing business?
Early in my law school career, one phrase stuck with me right away: “tough cases make bad law.” This, of course, begs the question, what makes a “tough” case. Usually it’s a unique fact pattern that has limited applicability to a broader spectrum of cases. In the nascent and growing area of Social Media law, there is no shortage of quirky cases.
My hat is off to Eric Goldman who recently blogged about a social media case that is “tough” because of the way that the lawyers framed the issue. On its face, the case of Christou v. Betaport is an unfair competition case between a night club owner and one of his former partners. The case, being tried in a federal court in Denver, Colorado, involves trade secret theft and antitrust allegations and alleged misuse of MySpace “friends.” Essentially, the complaint alleges that Roulier, a principle of Beatport and former associate of Christou, used a MySpace account to promote his club at the expense of Christou.
Goldman gets to the heart of why this case is tough: “the plaintiffs allege that they “secured the profiles through web profile login and passwords.” This is a garbled allegation.” Put another way, the lawyers whose job it is to supply the facts that frame the issues, probably meant to say something else. According to Goldman the plaintiffs probably meant that the defendants accessed an account impermissibly and in so doing accessed information they did not have a right to access. In terms of a claim for trade secret misappropriation, the harm came when defendants used that information.
I like Goldman’s article because he takes the time to break down both the confused framing of the issue, but also the court’s apparent confusion with how to address it. It’s a short article and definitely worth the few minutes it takes to read.
From my perspective the key take-away is a perspective on the trade secret implications of Social Media accounts. Business and their lawyers are constantly trying to evaluate the legal risks of Social Media and provide guidance on how best to mitigate those risks.
Protecting a Social Media account as a trade secret seems a tricky proposition. Ostensibly, the primary “value” of an account is the list of “followers.” A list that is publicly available is, therefore, not a secret. A better approach is to treat the login credentials themselves as the trade secret since this control’s ones ability to access the account and to communicate with those followers.
Please feel free to comment and follow me here: @adlerlaw
David M Adler, noted entertainment and creatival arts lawyer will be participating in the Visiting Artist Series with Reginald Lawrence (Shepsu Aakhu).
Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:50 – 1:30 pm
DePaul Center – Room 80051 E. Jackson Blvd.Chicago, IL 60604
Lunch will be served.
Visiting Artist Reginald Lawrence (Shepsu Aakhu) will discuss the legal issues that he has faced in his multi-dimensional career as a playwright, producer, director, and arts educator. In particular, he will focus on the life cycle of a theatrical production from dealing with authors to hiring actors, directors, and crew to mounting the finished production. He will share his perspective on legal questions related to collaboration, intellectual property, and production credit.
Leading Chicago arts lawyer David Adler will join in the conversation, and Professor Margit Livingston will moderate.
For more information on the Visiting Artist Series, please click here.
Registration: General registration is $25 for the 1.5 hour CLE discussion. To register, please visit http://www.regonline.com/reginaldlawrence.
DePaul students, faculty, and staff can register to attend for free by emailing Cecelia Story at cstory@depaul.edu.
DePaul University College of Law is an accredited CLE provider. This event has been approved for 1.5 CLE credits.
In 2011, the Federal Trade Commission slapped Google and Facebook for violating their own privacy policies, forcing both to submit to years of privacy audits. In February, 2012 , the Obama administration issued a blueprint for a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.” The FTC, the main government agency responsible for protecting privacy, called Monday for legislation that would give consumers access to information collected about them by data brokers similar to the rights they now have to review information amassed by credit reporting agencies.
The FTC’s report comes a little over a month after the White House released its privacy bill of rights that called on companies to be more transparent about privacy and grant consumers greater access to their data but that stopped short of backing an explicit “do not track” rule. The Federal Trade Commission’s 57-page privacy report consisted of a set of “best practices” that the Internet industry is expected to follow — or face sanctions. The report mirrors many of the provisions of the “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” released by the White House and represents the first serious efforts at striking a balance in online consumer privacy protection related to web usage.
Critics contend the framework is not as extensive as the White House Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights announced back in February. That already made provision for “Do Not Track” technology, with Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL – together responsible for almost 90-percent of behavioral advertising – already opting in. Privacy advocates have slammed the new” guidelines, arguing that the proposed system for ensuring online data security fails to take advantage of existing authority and relies too much on self-regulation of the online industry. The new framework “mistakenly endorses self-regulation and ‘notice and choice,’” the Electronic Privacy Information Center claims, ”and fails to explain why it has not used its current Section 5 authority to better safeguard the interests of consumers.”
Intellectual property is often the most significant driver of value among a company’s assets. Therefore, it is increasingly important for companies to actively manage their intellectual property assets to identify, categorize, register and enforce IP assets while minimizing the possibility of legal disputes.
Whether acquiring technology, developing new products or taking stock of the company’s intangible assets, companies must develop ways to protect their assets better, determine ways to realize more revenue from such assets, and reduce risks of costly litigation.
Below are ten intellectual property management tips that will help Companies and their counsel identify and protect IP assets and address infringement issues, among other key steps.
1. Identify: Simply put, think about what patents,trademarksand copyrights you might have and categorize them appropriately. This includes ideas in development.
2. Organize: Once categorized, review the relevant creation and publication/use dates. Determineregistrationstatus. File necessary maintenance documents as appropriate and create calendar/docket future due dates for supplemental filings.
3. Monitor: Review the USPTO and Copyright office databases periodically to ensure no junior users may weaken your rights.
4. Conduct a USPTO “Basic Search”: Start your search here. Individual results pages will include direct links to the mark’s records in TARR (best way to check current status of application/mark), ASSIGN (best way to see if the mark has been assigned), TDR (best way to retrieve relevant documents), TTAB (search and review board proceedings).
5. Conduct a USPTO Document Search: Use this database to determine existence of and locate documents related to specific applications.
6. Conduct a Copyright.gov Search: This is the best place to start with any copyrightrelated questions. Includes searched for copies of registered works.
7. Google- search: Great secondary, broad-stroke search. Tends to return higher percentage of irrelevant results, but good at finding that needle-in-a-haystack type rip-off/con artist.
8. Create Google alerts: Use these to stay abreast of relevant changes in the database. Narrow alert criteria to specific keywords/phrases.
9. Conduct a State Trademark Databases Search: Don’t forget your own back yard. Search state databases for d/b/as, etc. (IL=cyberdriveillinois.com).
10. Ask you lawyer about specific concerns. Every situation is different and the only way to properly asses the risks/costs of any course of action is to discuss your matter with a competent attorney who practices in this area.
Seemingly overnight, Social media has moved from a business curiosity to an invaluable tool for customer engagement, brand positioning and employee empowerment. For example, social media use for 18-29 year olds has grown from 16% in 2005 to 89% in 2010. A recent survey, now in its third year, found that Social Media is imperative and effective to stand out in a crowded market: 88% of all marketers found that it helped increase exposure and 76% found that it increased traffic and subscriptions.
Faced with the rapid adoption of social media services and platforms, companies find themselves in a dilemma: move quickly to adapt to new technologies, or put policies in place that support marketing goals. Finding the right balance between taking appropriate business risks and minimizing legal ones is a dilemma shared by all businesses, and it can be particularly tricky in the rapidly changing realm of social media. A social media snafu could pull a business into a range of legal imbroglios, involving employment law, intellectual property rights, advertising, defamation, libel, antitrust, and privacy protection. What follows is a list of five common social media legal mistakes that businesses are making.
1. Your Company does not have a social media policy.
Social media is going through an evolution from social media to social business. Yet In the rush to avoid being left behind, some 79% of companies do not have social media policies in place. Companies and employees are becoming deep users of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, private-label platforms, and the like. Absence of a policy has led to lawsuits over basic issues such as ownership of LinkedIn profiles and Twitter followers. Lack of a policy could also lead to awkward situations that require a response, but may not rise to the level of a legal quandary such as public criticism by a volunteer or advisor.
Having a social media policy cannot prevent the occurrence of unintended consequences. However, it can address most risks that businesses will face and provide an informal framework for addressing issues that will inevitably arise before they become full-fledged emergencies that require a legal solution.
2. Your Company’s social media policy is unenforceable.
Not surprisingly, one of the most active legal areas of social media for business has been in the context of Employer-Employee relations. In 2011, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a report stating that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had received 129 cases involving social media. The majority of claims concerned overly-restrictive employer social media policies or employee discipline and even termination based on use of social media.
More recently, the NLRB released updated guidance discussing 14 such cases in particular. Significantly, the NLRB criticized five employers’ social media policies, as “unlawfully overly broad” (e.g., too restrictive). In four cases, an employee’s use of Facebook to complain about their employer was held to be “protected concerted activity.” The benefit for employers is that the report frames the discussion for the appropriate scope of an enforceable social media policy.
3. Your employees don’t understand your social media policy.
For companies who have drafted a social media policy, another risk is that the employees who are engaged in social media on behalf of the company or brand do not understand the policies. Training employees about what it is, how it works and what’s expected is just the beginning.
For example, Australian telecomm company Telstra is an excellent example of social media transparency. This 40,000+ employee company mandates social media training built around a manageable policy focused on “3Rs” – responsibility, respect and representation. To promote awareness and understanding, the comic book-styled policy answers simple questions like “what is Facebook?” and more complex issues like employer criticism on personal blogs. Taking it a step further, the company published their entire social media training guide online for others to study and critique.
4. Your privacy policy is out of date.
Back in the early days of the Internet “Gold Rush,” companies raced to create an online presence complete with ecommerce storefronts. Partly due to the length of time it took to get a web site up and partly due to the fear of risks associated with ecommerce, companies made sure to implement comprehensive Terms of Use and Privacy Policies. Many have not revisited those policies since.
The risks of an outdated privacy policy are twofold. First, it may be unenforceable for any number of reasons. For example, the company has changed the way it gathers and stores information about site visitors, has changed the platforms from which it gathers such data and potentially with whom it shares such data, even unwittingly.
More importantly, the dynamics of online usage and marketing have changed. The availability of GPS data and commonly used technologies for targeted advertising and related services pose new privacy risks such as leaking personally identifiable information including usernames, email addresses, first names, last names, physical addresses, phone numbers, and birthdays. A recent series of articles by the Wall Street Journal analyzed the tracking files installed on people’s computers by the 50 most popular U.S. websites, plus WSJ.com and found that some sites like dictionary.com had over 200 such tracking cookies.
Second, an outdated privacy policy may subject a business to scrutiny and even penalties from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). On October 12, 2011 the FTC announced a settlement with a file-sharing application developer over allegations that it used deceptive default privacy settings, which would lead consumers to unintentionally and unknowingly share personal files from their mobile device or computer with the public.
5. Your Company is Not Engaging In The Conversation.
Lastly, social media enables instantaneous, ubiquitous, electronic social interaction using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. The platforms and services that enable this interaction also provide an unfettered medium for defamatory statements about individuals, disparaging remarks about a companies’ products and services and inaccurate or misleading remarks by over-enthusiastic employees.
The legal risk is that a company often does not control such conversations which can quickly spiral out of control. Many web sites and blogs allow comments and invite participation by unrelated third parties. Having a strategy for when, how, and why to engage is critical to mitigate the legal risks since this area of law is notoriously fact and circumstances dependent and varies by jurisdiction.
Contact Us For a Consultation.
Is your business making one of the mistakes described above? Do you want to learn how to use social media to market and communicate with existing and prospective clients and do so in a way that minimizes potential risks and pitfalls? Hopefully, the guidance outlined above can serve as a good starting point for discussions about how best to use social media as well as suggestions regarding factors that firms may wish to consider in strengthening their compliance and risk management programs. We invite you to contact us with comments and requests about how we can help you educate your employees, prevent fraud, monitor risk, and promote compliance. We can be reached at lsglegal.com, 866-734-256, @adlerlaw and dadler@lsglegal.com.
The past few years have witnessed an explosion of legal and regulatory activity involving social and other new media. This session will examine several key areas, including copyright, trademark and related intellectual property concerns; defamation, obscenity and related liability; false advertising and marketing restrictions; gaming; data privacy issues presented by social media; and impacts of social media on employees and the workplace. Attendees will learn how to identify legal risks and issues before they become full-scale emergencies and how to develop appropriate policies and guidelines covering social media activity.
The RSA® Conference 2012 is coming up: February 27 – March 2, 2012 at the Moscone cEnter in San Francisco, CA.
Can’t make the Conference? Listen to the podcast here to get a sense of what you need to know.
The updated FTC Guides contain two notable areas of concern for marketers. First, the Guides removed the safe harbor for advertisements featuring a consumer’s experience with a product or service, the so-called “results not typical” disclosure. Second, the FTC Guides underscored the longstanding principle of disclosing “material connections” between advertisers and the consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities providing reviews and endorsements of products and services.
Even with the illustrations provided within the FTC Guides themselves, it is still confusing for advertisers, marketers, bloggers and social media users to know how to comply with the guidelines. The purpose of this article is to provided simple, concrete standards to determine (1) when to make certain disclosures and (2) the type of disclosures required by the situation. I have grouped the disclosures into seven categories: Personal Opinion, Free Samples & Free Gifts, Promotional Relationship, Employment Relationship, Affiliate Relationship, Healthcare Disclosures, and Financial Guidelines & Disclosures. The key requirement to keep in mind is the obligation to disclose any relationship that may have influenced you.
1. Personal Opinion
If you write a review or blog post and your post contains only your own opinions, you haven’t received any compensation for the review or post, and you otherwise have no material connection to the topic of your post, you have nothing to disclose.
2. Free Sample/Free Gift
If you have been given a free copy, sample, or gift of a product or service and you write a review or blog post, you must disclose the facts and circumstances of how you received the item or service, even if you have not been paid to review or post on that topic. You do not run afoul of the disclosure rules if you receive payment unrelated your content. This disclosure is useful to keep in mind when your content relates to product previews, reviews of samples, services, gifts, books, software, music, movies, etc.
3. Promotional Relationships
If you write a review or blog post and your post is based upon an advertising relationship, and you have received compensation (cash, free services, product samples for personal use or a gift) for the review or post, you must disclose the nature of the relationship, whether you received anything of value, and information about relationships with advertisers or endorsers that would have a material impact about how a prospective consumer would view the message. This disclosure is useful to keep in mind when your content relates to paid posts, sponsored messages, tweets, fan page postings, etc.
4. Employment Relationships
If you write a review or blog post and your post is based upon an employment relationship, e.g. you are an employee or shareholder of a related company, you have a “material business relationship” to disclose, even if you are not being directly compensated for the message. You may post on behalf of a business or brand. In fact, it may even be part of your job description. Again, be mindful of the requirement to disclose any “connections” that may have influenced you, including both direct and indirect relationships.
5. Affiliate Relationships
If you write a review or blog post and your post is based upon an affiliate relationship, e.g., you have included affiliate links on your page, you must disclose the fact that the relationship exists and that you will be paid for referrals from your page.
6. Healthcare Disclosures
If you write a review or blog post and your content is based upon a connection to a pharmaceutical or healthcare product or program, you need to include relevant healthcare-related disclosures or information safety warnings, side effects, or official links with information.
7. Financial Guidelines & Disclosures
If you write a review or blog post and you work for a financial services company, you may be making investor-relations communications and your communications are subject to regulation by the NASD, SEC, FINRA and potentially state and federal regulatory agencies. The FINRA Guidance on Blogs & Social Networking Sites” can be found here. Record Retention: ensure that you can retain records of those communications. Suitability: a particular communication a “recommendation” for purposes of NASD Rule 2310 and is it suitable for potential recipients. Public Appearances: determine whether your post part of an “interactive online forum” and whether supervision is required. Third-Party Posts: If your firm created or “sponsors” and online forum, be aware that, under certain circumstances, a customer’s or other third party’s content on a social media site may become attributable to the firm. Whether third-party content is attributable to a firm depends on whether the firm has (1) involved itself in the preparation of the content or (2) explicitly or implicitly endorsed or approved the content.
Clearly, legal and regulatory compliance for social media remains a minefield. Although this article is intended to give you a working knowledge of the types of risks created by, and disclosures required for, the use of Social Media, it is NOT LEGAL ADVICE. Each situation is unique and you should consult with qualified legal counsel regarding your specific circumstances.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David M. Adler, Esq. is an attorney, author, educator, entrepreneur and partner at the boutique intellectual property, entertainment & media law firm LEAVENS, STRAND, GLOVER & ADLER, LLC based in Chicago, Illinois. My responsibilities include providing advice to business units and executives on copyright, trademark, ecommerce, software/IT, media & entertainment and issues associated with creating and commercializing innovations and creative content, drafting and negotiating contracts and licenses, advising on securities laws and corporate governance and managing outside counsel. Learn more about me here: www.ecommerceattorney.com and here: Leavens Strand Glover & Adler, LLC.
The use of social media for marketing and advertising purposes is one of the fastest growing areas for business and marketers. The advent of social media sites like Facebook provides the opportunity for authentic interaction and engagement with customers. Therefore, it is no surprise that it is being used as a marketing tool by companies large and small to help them achieve their strategic goals. But with every technological development and opportunity, new legal and business risks present themselves. Understanding and minimizing these risks will help you maximize the opportunities. A best practices approach to social media marketing involves having the company’s philosophy, methodology, and guidelines captured in a comprehensive written policy that is clearly and regularly communicated to the employees, and regularly updated to keep abreast of new developments, opportunities and evolving legal guidance. Attendees will learn how to identify the legal issues and develop policies and procedures to keep informed about the current technology, marketing strategies and regulatory compliance.
Everyone at AF Expo shares a belief that the Facebook experience represents a paradigm shift in the way that marketing professionals identify, engage and convert customers. In the past, marketers had to conduct research to locate customs and to determine their wants and needs. Once these were identified, you needed to convince your customers to value your brand, understand your product/service and ultimately purchase what you were selling.
Facebook changes all of these assumptions. It offers an interactive platform where customs are actively engaged in seeking out the brands they are interested in – whether individually or through trusted networks, tell brand owned what they do and do not like about their brand and tell marketers whether they are open to receiving more information. Interestingly, the platform allows marketers to continue the conversation even when the customer has nominally disengaged (through trusted networks).
Like everything else, with great power comes great risks. Facebook marketing that is thoughtful, respectful and legally compliant is extremely effective. [give examples] However, marketing efforts that fail to understand and account for the requirements to maintain legal compliance can be a fixated.
In the beginning one could poke, like and comment. But what happens when you can purchase? Facebook is rapidly becoming a platform to identify, locate, contact and transact business with consumers of goods and services, both physical and virtual, using currency that is both physical and virtual.
My presentation will identify and explain the risks for Facebook marketers, grouped into three risk categories, “The Three Cs” of Facebook marketing:
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