Posts Tagged: "Starbucks"

In 2016 social media users reached 2.3 billion. With an audience made up of consumers, competitors and industry influencers, social media is a melting pot of opportunity and risk. Social platforms have quickly become a go-to platform for engaging with customers. If used correctly, companies have the potential to build an online persona that stands out and drives commercial success… When big brands enforce their trademark rights against potentially infringing smaller entities, the David-and-Goliath-type battle can help to alienate the consumer market. Brands such as M&Ms are now using online personas – developed on social media – to gently enforce trademark rights.

Attorneys and non-attorneys love to make fun of these overly aggressive and unreasonable cease and desist letters. Online, a well-written and funny response can go viral, bringing much unwanted attention to the trademark holder and undermining the purpose of endeavor… The parody website ThinkGeek launched a fake product on April Fool’s Day in 2010 called Canned Unicorn Meat. The tag line read: Pate is passe. Unicorn, the new white meat. The National Pork Board, the trade group for pork farms, owns the trademark for “the other white meat” and completely missed the joke. They penned a 12-page cease and desist letter to ThinkGeek.

As anyone who’s worked at a law firm can attest, lawyers at a firm use each others’ experience to inform their strategy in a given case. Firm-wide emails asking if anyone has appeared in front of a particular judge or tribunal are routine and allow lawyers to benefit from the insights their colleagues provide. Big data analytics allow lawyers to gather this same information, but on a much larger scale. For instance, analytics platforms allow attorneys to view their judge’s complete history, including every decision issued and every case cited, to identify the legal precedent the judge finds most persuasive.