Posts Tagged: "Twitter"

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?

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.

Of all of the things NFL quarterback Tom Brady has been accused of ruining over the years, the internet is not necessarily at the top of the list, and certainly not based on an alleged copyright infringement that he had no part in perpetuating. Yet, a photograph of him and Danny Ainge, the general manager of the Boston Celtics, could in fact forever change the internet and online publishing as we know it.

On November 20th, both Peter Gene Hernandez, the American singer-songwriter-producer who goes by the professional name Bruno Mars, and New York City-based Warner Music Inc. were named as defendants in a copyright case filed in the Southern District of New York by Burbank, CA-based photographer Catherine McGann. The lawsuit targets Mars’ social media use of a photograph of himself taken by McGann when Mars was performing as an Elvis impersonator as a child.

Twitter®, Instagram®, Facebook®, Pinterest® and other social media websites and apps are great avenues for advertising and promotion of one’s business and brand. However, in using social media to promote one’s business, there are a number of pitfalls that one must avoid. Using social media in relation to a business is not the same as using social media for personal, non-commercial use… The issues with using someone else’s copyrights, right of publicity and trademark in social media to promote a business is that the business is arguably profiting off of someone else’s property that does not belong to them. That can and does create a significant amount of conflict. Profiting from another’s property is what separates the use of social media in business from just personal use.

“Filing a trademark application with the goal of claiming a right to a particular term – with nothing more – is a fundamental misunderstanding of our trademark laws,” Alston & Bird partner Jason Rosenberg, explained. “Individuals and corporations rushing to design t-shirts and coffee mugs with phrases like ‘What the covfefe?’ on them aren’t likely to be able to claim ownership of the term, or stop anyone else from using it. You cannot simply hear a word you like, file a trademark application, and claim it as your own.  In the United States, the law requires more.”

Facebook is not the only company seeking to provide content to consumers via their own Internet-based platforms. In early May, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) announced a deal with San Francisco-based social media firm Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) to livestream 20 games per year over multiple seasons on the social media platform. The first WNBA game livestreamed on Twitter on Sunday, May 14th, earned 1.1 million viewers, nearly one-third the average audience watching National Football League (NFL) games streamed on Twitter during the 2016-17 season. Seattle-based Internet e-commerce giant Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) will livestream Thursday night NFL games during the 2017-18 season for $50 million, a sum which is reportedly about five times what Twitter paid to broadcast NFL games last year. Twitter’s WNBA deal and Amazon’s NFL deal both include promotional efforts on behalf of the Internet companies to promote either sports league.

How should intellectual property law firms firms market their legal services to potential clients? In the golden age of attorneys before the 1977 Bates v State Bar of Arizona Supreme Court decision made lawyer advertising legal, practice marketing comprised word of mouth, actual social networking and other first person methods. But since then ads and a host of other mainstream marketing methods became available to the legal profession. So which ones should an IP firm employ in the search for new clients? Which might be advisable to avoid? How much of this should happen in house or get outsourced? Let’s take a look.

Recently, we took a closer look at four of the largest trending stories playing out in the world of intellectual property and patents during 2016. Today we turn to the world of technology to see what trends have been developing in the technology sector over the past year. From an ever-widening scope of business activities being pursued by Silicon Valley’s largest firms to growing government authority over one sector of Internet services, there have been plenty of interesting stories playing out on the stage of America’s tech sector.

Text messages sent between Andreesen and Erskine Bowles speak to Zuckerberg’s desire to be able to maintain control of Facebook while possibly serving two years in government… The fact that Zuckerberg is open to serving in government might actually carry some sway with the Trump transition team, which includes a Facebook connection through Peter Thiel… Given Zuckerberg’s stances on Internet issues, one possible position for Zuckerberg could be at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Internet attorneys spend our days fighting the good fight – at least that’s what I think I do. In a time where judges confuse metadata and metatags, and people believe everything online is “in the public domain,” we march on. We worry about keeping the first amendment in tact and relentlessly champion Section 230, even when our protagonists are less than ideal (i.e., Backpage.com, thedirty.com). For better or for worse, we do our best, to make the Internet a place where people can have their opinions, and the companies we represent don’t get sued for them. So, what happens when the CEO of Reddit, one of the largest community forum websites out there, decides to have a little fun at the expense of Trump supporters/moderators on the subreddit, r/The_Donald? Let’s put it this way, nothing good.

There has been a rising tide of voices seeking to ensure that the Internet remains open to alternative viewpoints with easy access to all for years to come. In recent years, these groups have sought political avenues for ensuring that their ideals become the law of the land. For instance, many thousands of American citizens have supported net neutrality rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), rules which have recently been upheld by a federal appellate court this June. Now, a consortium of civil rights and open technology groups are trying to make open Internet concepts an issue on the political trail leading up to the election of the next U.S. President.

ISPs have increasingly come under the focus of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the agency’s chairman, Tom Wheeler. The FCC is fresh from a major victory on its net neutrality rules which were recently upheld by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. That victory has now placed some momentum on data privacy rules proposed this March by the FCC, rules which would further protect ISP consumers by ensuring that their ISP sees as little of their data as possible. Some industry analysts believe that the FCC will continue to take action, the proposed broadband privacy rules being one part of that action. Other rules proposed by the FCC would open up set-top boxes to third-party cable providers as well as prevent zero-rating of data services, which allows consumers to access dedicated apps without being charged for data.

The recent Twitter investment has much to do with the SoundCloud Go premium subscription service launched in late March of this year. The premium service, which costs $9.99 per month, gives users ad-free access to 125 million songs available from 12 million creators. The service also enables offline listening of tracks and access to the SoundCloud music database on mobile or personal computer platforms. There have been questions by analysts regarding how Twitter plans to incorporate SoundCloud profitably into its own social media platform. One major issue for the social media company is its current inability to increase the pace of users on its platform.

Recently, some major American tech companies operating across the globe have publicly announced their agreement to a code of conduct developed by the European Commission and designed to “combat the illegal spread of hate speech online in Europe.” The code of conduct, to which these tech companies have promised the European Commission their online services will adhere, stipulates that the companies have to establish a couple of processes that target the elimination of hate speech.