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Brand recognition and brand awareness

Having a social media presence in today’s digital and fast-paced era is critical. However, having a social media presence requires a long-term strategy that includes a plan to optimize the company’s brand awareness and brand recognition. These are some of the key factors in the profitability and longevity of a business:

Businesses today operate in a global, borderless environment, in which social media platforms allow them to market and distribute their goods and services around the world with ease. As a result, it has become more difficult to protect and enforce a company’s intellectual property rights online. For example, an alleged infringer could circumvent a country-specific restriction to access certain material by simply changing his or her ‘virtual’ location. This is posing an interesting question for the courts, and has led to a recent Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decision in which the SCC ordered a worldwide injunction against a third party in order to ensure that an alleged infringer could not circumvent a national restriction. (Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc., 2017 SCC 34 (the Worldwide Injunction Decision)).

Experiencing virtual reality

The line between the digital world and the physical world is becoming increasingly blurred as we enter an era of virtual reality (VR).  VR can be defined as a “computer technology that uses virtual reality headsets…to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user’s physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment.”  In other words, VR uses computers to create a virtual environment that feels as close to reality as possible.

VR will have a significant impact on social media. Instead of communicating through texts, pictures and videos, VR technology will allow two or more people to feel as though they are in the same room together even though each person is in the comfort of their own home, using their own VR system.  Companies are already introducing social VR apps that allow users to communicate with each other through the use of avatars in a 3D environment.

Human interactions with technology

In the past few years, the use of social media has increased rapidly. A key feature of social media platforms and social media apps is the ability to interact with other people in ways that were not thought possible in previous generations.  With the click of a button, someone from the other side of the world can appear on a screen in front of you.

Technology and social media have not just given rise to platforms that facilitate human-to-human interaction: recently, advancements in technology have led to a rise in a new type of social relationship: human-to-computer interaction.  The interactions we have with technology are not just based on user input.  Technology has learned to respond to people.  It can communicate with us.  It can perform tasks.  It can learn our habits and tailor services to our needs.  It can learn to identify us.  It can assemble information and provide solutions to problems.  This ‘artificial intelligence’ (or AI) has become a key component in our daily social interactions.

The age of the Internet poses many new challenges to those individuals seeking to protect and enforce their intellectual property rights online. As the Federal Court of Appeal in Canada recently stated: “Under the cloak of anonymity on the internet, some can illegally copy, download, and distribute the intellectual property of others, such as movies, songs and writings.”  (Voltage Pictures, LLC et al. v. John Doe #1 et al., 2017 FCA 97 at para. 1 [Voltage Pictures].)  As a result, Canada has slowly began modernizing its copyright regime in order to allow the cloak of anonymity to be lifted and the identity of alleged infringers to be revealed.  (See e.g., Copyright Modernization Act, S.C. 2012, c. 20, s. 47.)

With the proliferation of so-called “fake news”, companies are starting to rely on third party organizations to perform a “fact checking” function in order to distinguish between legitimate news and fake news. The fake news epidemic gained traction in the recent US presidential election.  We have previously written about the fake news problem, as well as the UK Government’s plan to tackle the issue.

While fake news began as false information disguised as legitimate news sources, the problem with fake news and the question as to what constitutes fake news is becoming more complicated and nuanced.

Social media users have a new demand for 2017 – they want the ability to edit their public messages. Spelling mistakes, missing words and misplaced pronouns can have embarrassing, unintended and sometimes dangerous consequences.  The ability to edit one’s message is an attractive feature.  This request has led some users on the social media platform Twitter to ask its CEO when an edit function would be introduced.

While the internet has created ample opportunities for IP rights holders to exploit their intellectual property rights online, it also poses significant challenges relating to the protection of those same IP rights from would-be infringers. The internet’s global reach combined with the sophistication and anonymity of most online users has created an environment where it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold individual infringers accountable.

Social media platforms often require users to agree to Terms of Service or Terms of Use (“TOS”) to use the platform. These contracts can be lengthy and many social media users may not read them in their entirety before agreeing and proceeding to use the platform. This can raise particular issues in contract law, especially about the legal enforceability of the provisions.

The legal enforceability of TOS provisions is relevant to both social media users and app developers. Individuals or businesses who use social media should consider how the TOS affect their legal rights and obligations, especially regarding privacy and dispute resolution. On the other hand, if you’re developing an app for your business, you need to consider what provisions you should include in your TOS and how they should be drafted to ensure legal enforceability.

In particular, “choice of forum” provisions in TOS may be contentious in Canadian courts. Such provisions purport to set out where dispute resolution must take place.

The anonymity of the Internet has posed many challenges to the protection of intellectual property rights. The sheer size of the population of online users and the millions of file-sharing programs and other social media outlets that exist have left IP rights holders struggling to protect their property and goodwill in the digital era. For example, the battle between protecting copyright online while simultaneously protecting the privacy rights of online users has led to interesting debates in the courts as well as new IP strategies that are currently being explored.