Posts Tagged: "Social Media"

From the perspective of the Intangible Investor, 2022 will be a year of new opportunities and transitional growth. IP business models will evolve, and risk and return calculations will become more reliable. In the decade since the America Invents Act (AIA) was enacted, patent licensing challenges have increased for many technology companies and independent inventors. The neutering of software, e-commerce and algorithm patents are at least partly responsible but, amazingly, software-related patents represent almost two-thirds of U.S. grants for the first half of 2021.

Millions of content creators hoping to establish a cash machine on platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram are learning that it takes more than lively moves and thousands of followers to be taken seriously. They are also discovering that not all creators are created equal, even when they are the source. Content on TikTok and other social media platforms is theoretically copyrightable. In practice, however, the IP rights of social media creators today are less clear. Work generated by lesser known creators, especially if they are young and Black, is being stolen with little apparent recourse.

Robert Willison, an Atlanta real estate investor, could not believe what he was seeing on the computer screen. A business associate had mentioned that Mr. Willison might want to Google himself, as some odd search results were appearing. And there they were. Post after post after post, across numerous websites and social media platforms, alleging that Mr. Willison was a sociopathic criminal. According to the posts, Mr. Willison sold drugs to federal judges, stole credit cards numbers, stole money, made death threats, committed home invasions, masterminded a Ponzi scheme, and more…. Understanding the best practices for handling these situations can help turn them around, just as Mr. Willison did, to protect your online reputation – a valuable component to both an individual and their business’s intellectual property

Former President Donald J. Trump announced today that he is suing Facebook, Twitter and Google/YouTube in separate class action suits, claiming, among other allegations, that the platforms have “increasingly engaged in impermissible censorship resulting from threatened legislative action, a misguided reliance upon Section 230 of the Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230, and willful participation in joint activity with federal actors.”… All three complaints take aim at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, dubbing it “[l]egislation passed twenty-five (25) years ago intended to protect minors from the transmission of obscene materials on the Internet, and to promote the growth and development of social media companies” that has outgrown its original intent and enabled each of the companies to become behemoths who censor content of their choosing.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) doesn’t often get much action on social media, but last week, five days before the U.S. Presidential election, the Office came under fire for its social media posts touting the United States’ record on intellectual property under the Trump Administration. The posts featured the following quote from USPTO Director Andrei Iancu: “Just a reminder, under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. intellectual property ecosystem ranks #1 in the world, according to the 2020 International IP Index.”

A hashtag is a useful way to promote your brand on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. When the name of a brand, a tagline or catchphrase is hashtagged in a post, other users of the platform can find the hashtag easily by simply searching for that particular tag. It’s become an essential part of every brand’s social media marketing strategy. It can be used to attract new customers and engage with them. IP Australia updated the Australian Trade Marks Office Manual of Practice and Procedure in 2016 to include a definition for a hashtag and offers some guidelines for businesses to follow. It also lists examples of what could be seen as ambiguous cases, which you can look at to see if they could also relate to the eligibility of your brand.

Twitter officials recently announced they’ll begin placing a notice over tweets that violate their standards regarding abusive or bullying behavior, but that they still deem to have some public value.  Users will have to click through the notice in order to view the original tweet, and also see a link to the following message: “The Twitter rules about abusive behavior apply to this Tweet. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain available.” On the surface, this may not seem significantly different from the motion picture industry’s rating system or the advisory notices posted prior to most on-demand programming.  But dig a little deeper and what makes Twitter’s proposed flagging policy particularly unsettling is their intention to apply it very selectively.

In a recent letter, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take action against makers of “detox teas” for engaging in “predatory” and misleading marketing tactics on social media platforms, targeting primarily young adults (and young women in particular). Taking aim at the Instagram idol Kim Kardashian, Senator Blumenthal pointed out that influencers earn up to “six figure sums” for a single social media post promoting detox tea products without any expectation that the endorsers personally use the products and expose themselves to the alleged health risks associated with the teas.    

This week in Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill is silent due to district work periods for the House of Representatives and state work periods for the Senate. However, the nation’s capital is still very busy with a collection of think tank events related to innovation and technology. A pair of events at New America looks at how technology and social media can stem the tide of extremist ideologies or how advances in DNA testing can help solve cold cases. Cybersecurity challenges at the next Summer Olympic Games are the topic of discussion at the Wilson Center. The Heritage Foundation also hosts a pair of events looking at how the Constitutional Framers viewed property and issues with China-based Huawei’s dominance in 5G. Closing out the week is a Friday event at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation exploring challenges to the U.S. Postal Service in the e-commerce era.

Trademark protection has never been more important than in today’s increasingly global economy. A company’s name, trademark or service mark, trade dress and website domain name are often its most important and valuable assets, and this applies as well to companies with lesser-known brands since social media has provided them with a platform to reach a worldwide audience. But even companies with well-known brands use social media as a tool to manage their brands’ image and engage with customers directly. In a borderless world economy, brands simply must utilize social media to remain competitive.

While many holiday shoppers may think that they’re getting a bargain by purchasing goods displaying a particular brand without having to pay brand prices, these shoppers are unwittingly gifting low-quality items or worse, products that pose health hazards, to their friends or loved ones. Thanks in large part to the Internet, counterfeiting operations have reached epidemic levels in recent years. Nearly half of all brand owners are losing revenues because of the sale of counterfeits and, in 2017, U.S. customs agencies seized a total of 34,143 shipments carrying counterfeited goods being imported into the U.S. But counterfeiting is a victimless crime, the common refrain goes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Terrorist organizations and organized crime families are turning to counterfeiting as a meaningful source of income given the exceptionally low penalties even if they are caught and extraordinarily high profit margins — profit margins that are even higher than selling drugs on the street. 

Andy Bitter, a former sports journalist covering the travails and triumphs of the Virginia Tech football team, was sued last month by his former employer, a local newspaper, for trade secret theft. According to the plaintiff Roanoke Times he was obligated by the company’s employee handbook to turn over all company property, and this necessarily included the Twitter account he had used to stay in touch with his 17,000+ followers… In spite of the mess it created, the Roanoke Times has reminded us of some important questions for industry in the information age. Who owns social media accounts? What role do they play in building competitive advantage? And how should companies manage their use?

The opinion acknowledges, in a footnote on page 3, that videos of the type that the Klein’s created, is not unique. Instead, it is part of a growing genre of “reaction videos” in which portions of an original video are interspersed with commentary to create a new creative work… Luckily for the Kleins, their fans were ready and willing to create a legal fund for their use. YouTube has also taken action to protect some content creators subject to false DMCA notices. However, with over 800 unique users, and over 100 hours of new videos being uploaded every minute, clearly YouTube cannot be required to protect all of its content creators from false copyright infringement allegations. In light of this decision, perhaps we are approaching a time where reconsideration, and revision, of the DMCA, is warranted.

Even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has added to the growing choir of critical voices, announcing in early April that he had deleted his Facebook profile over concerns about the company’s data collection practices. But Apple’s hands aren’t entirely clean when it comes to personal data privacy for its consumers. As a recent article published by The Canberra Times in Australia notes, Apple apps pre-installed on the iPhone were able collect personal information, including the name and location of childcare services, despite the fact that the writer attempted to delete those apps and did not give those apps additional data permissions. We recently took a look at Big Brother-style data collection technologies that have been patented by Facebook. Looking at Apple’s filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, it seems clear that, while Cook and Wozniak may be saying the right things in public, Apple itself might be just as culpable of over-collecting user data behind the scenes.