KMK Law Intellectual Property Blog

Once a company owns a trademark, it must police the mark for unauthorized use, or risk losing its rights. As a result, companies will send “cease and desist” letters to enforce and protect their marks. At times, however, legal rights are only one consideration. Public opinion and consumer perception are also part of the equation, as the Aloha Poke Co. (“Aloha Poke”), a Chicago based restaurant, recently learned firsthand.

So apparently, Netflix is good for something other than just House of Cards.  In an eagerly-awaiting ruling Wednesday, the SEC issued a report confirming that companies are permitted to disseminate material information through their social media channels in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (“Regulation FD”) so long as investors know that companies are going to do so. 

This post is an update to our August 27th post where we reported that a District Court in California held that privacy settings on Facebook and MySpace do actually matter.

On May 26^th, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled that, under the Stored Communications Act of 1986, postings to a user’s Facebook “wall” (and, similarly, to the “comments” page on MySpace – although nobody actually uses MySpace anymore) are considered private so long as the user has his privacy settings set such that only “friends” can see his wall postings.

Since we created an Evolving Media & Technology Team here at KMK, I have been telling brand owners to proactively manage their presence on Facebook by creating an official, corporate, Facebook page and strategically selecting the fan pages and copycat pages to shut down.  After yet another “update” to its site late last week, Facebook has now made this kind of brand management exponentially more difficult for trademark owners.

I’ll give Facebook credit for one thing — they keep making you come back to their site, if for no other reason than to perform a little “preventative maintenance” on your profile from time to time.

Yesterday, Facebook took the first step toward their goal of Facebook-ing the entire planet by announcing that its familiar “like” button will start showing up all over the internet on non-Facebook sites.  I guess because it’s so much fun to tell people that you “like” their Facebook status, Facebook now wants you to have that opportunity wherever you’re surfing online.