Over the years I’ve cataloged the difficulties courts and public schools have had with drawing the line between merely childish expression protected by the First Amendment and disruptive behavior that schools can lawfully punish. In many cases those issues get easier in the university setting, because the students are now (legally) adults in a setting[...]
Conference Speakers Should Follow FTC Guidelines for Sponsored Social Media Posts
I’ve done quite a bit of public speaking over the past few years, including on the rules governing commercial use of social media. Recently, I was invited to present to a conference of speakers bureau professionals on the rules their speakers should follow when writing in social media about the events at which they speak.[...]
Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: disclosures, FTC, IASB, JuliStarz, public speakers, speakers bureaus
SEC Gives Green Light to Social Media Disclosure… Or Does It? [GUEST POST]
This post was authored by Joseph R. Morrison, Jr., an associate attorney (MI Bar admission pending) at Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP. On Tuesday, April 2, 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) posted Release No. 69279 concerning the SEC’s investigation of Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix. In December 2012, the SEC had issued a “Wells Notice“ when[...]
Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: insider trading, Netflix, Reed Hastings, Reg FD, SEC
Delete at Your Own Risk: Spoliation of Social Media Evidence
Spoliation is defined as “intentional alteration or destruction of a document” that could have been used as evidence in litigation. Destroying a document in this way is abhorrent to our adversarial legal system, because it deprives the parties and the court of the information necessary to learn the truth about the issues in the case.[...]
Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Allied Concrete, evidence, Gatto v. United, Lester, preservation, spoliation
Publicity Rights and LinkedIn – The Case of Eagle v. Morgan
In Eagle v. Morgan (E.D. Penn. March 12, 2013), a banking company was found liable for infringing the publicity rights of its former CEO, Dr. Eagle. When Eagle left her position, the company used her password to access her LinkedIn account and lock her out of it. They then replaced her information with that of[...]
Filed Under: IP, Social Media Tagged With: eagle v. morgan, LinkedIn, publicity rights, Right of Publicity
Announcing a New Resource: the “Wassom on Social Media Law” e-Treatise
The word “treatise” is defined as “a written work dealing formally and systematically with a subject.” For many legal professionals, however, it is more commonly used to mean “those fat, outdated books that look pretty but gather dust on the bookshelf while I do my research online.” In today’s world, most printed resources just can’t[...]
Filed Under: Social Media
How Lawyers Get Their Hands on “Private” Facebook Posts
This article is excerpted from the upcoming e-treatise, Wassom on Social Media Law. It happens every day. First, someone gets sued (or starts a lawsuit). Then the “discovery” process of gathering information starts. Today, one of the first places lawyers look in many types of litigation is their opponent’s Facebook page. But that page is[...]
Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: discovery
Can a Court Force Me to Disclose My Facebook Password?
This post is excerpted from the upcoming e-treatise “Wassom on Social Media Law.” We’ve heard a lot in the news lately about forced disclosure of Facebook passwords. Almost all of the discussion has focused on new laws that states across the country have passed to prevent employers and schools from forcing employees and students to[...]
Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: discovery, facebook, password, relevabce, twitter, Wassom on Social Media Law
Fair Use, Copyright, and Social Media
This post is excerpted from the upcoming e-treatise “Wassom on Social Media Law.” Copyright exists in order “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” It accomplishes this by giving authors an economic incentive to create new works and share them with the public. But private control over the use of expressive works doesn’t[...]
Filed Under: IP, Social Media Tagged With: Boing Boing, Copyright, fair use, Lenz v. Universal, Ralph Lauren, Sedgwick
Trademarks, Likelihood of Confusion, and Social Media
Trademark law in the United States has one overarching goal: to prevent consumers from being confused over the source of a product or service. The function of a trademark is to communicate to the marketplace who is offering the good or service. So, for example, when I’m driving down the road and spy the Golden[...]
Filed Under: IP, Social Media Tagged With: facebook, kin, Kinect, likelihood of confusion, Trademark & Unfair Competition, twitter
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