September 2016

Earlier this year, we discussed that a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge found that an employee’s tweets could be considered protected “concerted activity” in Chipotle Services LLC d/b/a Chipotle Mexican Grill.  As a reminder, the administrative law judge determined that portions of Chipotle’s outdated Social Media Code of Conduct policy violated the U.S. National Labor Relations Act (NRLA).  The judge also found that Chipotle’s request that the employee remove his Twitter posts (i.e. “tweets”) also violated the NLRA. On August 18, 2016, a three-member panel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) affirmed that Chipotle’s Social Media Code of Conduct violated the NLRA, but the NLRB reversed the administrative law judge’s finding related to the Twitter posts.

We have previously written on social media account verification for businesses, in order to help customers deal only with the authentic brand.  But what about authenticating your social media followers/users/fans/members?

Unfortunately, there are currently “no methodologies available that would provide us with an exact number of non-actual member types of accounts,” according to LinkedIn’s 10-K filing for 2015.  (10-K at 18.)  LinkedIn goes on to state that some of its “non-actual member types of accounts” are: 

In an earlier blog post this year, we covered Authentication on Social Media Platforms and the need for businesses to authenticate their social media accounts to protect their brand, credibility, reputation and accountability while advertising or otherwise engaging with their customers in the online space.

Various social media platforms offer the blue “verified” badge in order to help users more easily find public figures and brands, and protect these profiles from the high likelihood of impersonation. The blue badge verifies or authenticates the account as belonging to public figures, celebrities, government, businesses or their brands. While Facebook allows users to submit an application for authentication, other social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat verify accounts on their own accord and do not let users request a verified badge (or special emoji in the case of SnapChat).

Recently, Twitter announced that it had created an online application process for authentication.

It is no doubt surprising and frustrating for brand owners when they find that someone has appropriated their trademarks on social media. A few of the common scenarios include:

  • small competitors modifying logos and passing them off as their own;
  • unauthorized distributors using logos and trademarks on their social media advertising; and
  • social media users registering account names that incorporate trademarks.

Pursuing the usual enforcement techniques can be difficult on social media, particularly when the identity of the infringer is unclear or unknown. The good news for brand owners is that most social media websites prohibit the infringement of another’s intellectual property rights in their terms of service.