Intellectual Property infringement has become constant with the growth of social media. With access to the internet being just a click away, it seems simple and easy to post away, repost or market your brand. However, while the internet has provided almost the perfect platform for sharing your feelings, thoughts or marketing brands and business, it has also provided an almost perfect platform for intellectual property infringing activities, either in the copyright or the trademark.
Businesses are constantly devising new ways to compete on the internet, and this may involve unfair competition practices. Knowingly or unknowingly, products, goods, and services by smaller brands may be passed off as that of a bigger brand on the internet. This may be to derive value or partake in the goodwill that the bigger brand has in the market. As such, brands may be falsely marketed as being a subsidiary, or an extension of another. In the sphere of social media influencers, their images may be passed off as an endorsement or promotion of a brand.
These unfair business practices may reduce the market value of a brand, especially when it is associated with what is deemed to be “an inferior brand”. Passing off a brand as being associated with another may cause confusion in the minds of the consumers since consumers intending to buy one, end up buying the other. This may also reduce the revenue accruing to the more famous brand.
Below are tips to protect the Intellectual Property in your Brands and Businesses on the Social Media
- Register your Intellectual Property: The importance of registering your intellectual property cannot be overemphasized. A lot of people take the issue of IP registration as a residual. But the truth is that a Certificate of Trademark Registration confers much more powers than we can imagine. It gives legal protection and cover over the use of your tradename, logo, brand or mark. Registration of your Intellectual Property acts as a warning against anyone seeking to infringe your right over the use of your tradename, logo, brand or mark. Unfortunately, a great populace tends to mistake registration of a Company with the registration of Intellectual Property. Rather they are two different registrations, accord protection to different areas of the law, and also different rights and liabilities. While registration of your company only gives your company a separate legal identity, different from you, registration of your Intellectual Property protects anyone from infringing your right or passing off their brands or products as that of your brand.
- Register your presence on Social Media Platforms: More often than not, we mistake the presence of brands and companies on social media as mainly for disseminating information and communicating with their consumers. But having a social media handle protects the Intellectual Property in your brand. This will help to reduce the passing off of fake handles as that of your official company handle. One way that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter had aided brands is by the addition of verification blue tick badge. This helps to create awareness to users on social media and reduce interactions from handles without the blue tick. Your absence on the internet might provide an opportunity for scrupulous business brands who wish to take advantage of your absence. A check through the various social media platforms will reveal that the world-leading brands in almost all sectors have already registered their presence on almost all social media platforms.
- Policing Social Media regularly for infringements: This is arguably one of the most viable means of protecting your Intellectual Property in social media. The law is that “equity aids the vigilant and not the indolent”. The fact that you have registered your Intellectual Property does not mean you should fold your arms. As a brand owner, the duty of policing the streets of the internet to monitor and catch infringement of your IP is on you. You have to be vigilant, as constantly, as new means of using IPs without obtaining the requisite licenses are constantly evolving.
- Disclaimers: IP owners have the duty of constantly putting out disclaimers as once an infringing brand or product is encountered. Putting out disclaimers as early as possible may help to reduce the quantum of damage an infringing act has on a brand.
- Legal Action: Sometimes, smaller brands that are yet to register their presence in the market may be dissuaded from pursuing legal action because of the cost associated with it. While it is always advised to weigh the financial implication of pursuing legal action, the effect of not taking any action should also be weighed. The possibility that this might create a bad precedent for your brand, leading to an increasing number of brands infringing on your Intellectual Property, with the belief that you will not pursue your right in Court. Failure to take up a legal action might be summarised to mean implied consent, which may actually not so. In that situation, you cannot later turn around to sue, as, by your action, you are deemed to have acquiesced to the infringement.
- Negotiating a Licence: This is an alternative to legal action, especially where your Intellectual Property Portfolio in a brand is large, that you cannot effectively monitor the use of your IPRs and efficiently police the market. When there is an infringement, instead of taking an action in court, the brand can negotiate a license in exchange for royalties. In such a situation, the duty of monitoring and policing the market falls upon the Licencees, who are therefore to take care to ensure that they are the only users of the Intellectual Property in the market.
Image culled from Google
The Social Media lawyer 