Social Media Squatting: How to Report Trademark Infringement on Social Media
Social media is everywhere. One recent estimate put the number of social media users at a staggering 2.77 billion people. With so many users, the amount of content shared via social media has similarly grown at a staggering rate. Currently, over 95 million photographs and videos are shared on Instagram® alone each day.
With so much activity and content in social media, it is little wonder that intellectual property rights-holders have struggled to effectively police their patent, trademark and copyright rights on social media. The issue of what steps should rights-holders take is, frankly, not easily answered.
On one hand, our firm has written articles on the use of websites and social media to criticize brands (e.g., registering a .sucks domain incorporating a third party’s brand or creating a Twitter® account that posts brand-critical Tweets). In general, much of this type of critical content is protected by the First Amendment.
On the other hand, our firm has also written articles on the difficulties of balancing intellectual property concerns with the type of organic content created by genuine, excited fans (e.g., a fan-run Facebook® page where customers upload photographs of themselves enjoying a brand’s products). Here, a rights-holder’s goal is to ensure that such third parties do not infringe or inappropriately “trade-off” of the rights-holder’s brand (without angering fans by being seen as “heavy handed” in how such intellectual property rights are enforced).
Much social media content, however, seemingly “walks the line” between what a brand might be forced to tolerate under the First Amendment and what a brand might be able to successfully attack under copyright law and/or trademark law. One interesting example is the @nihilist_arbys Twitter page which routinely posts dark, nihilist humor ending in phrases like “eat Arby’s” or “enjoy Arby’s.” While some of this “dark humor” might be protected by the First Amendment, the owner of the page has apparently begun selling merchandise such as the t-shirt shown below incorporating elements of the ARBY’S® logo:
It remains to be seen what steps (if any) Arby’s will take in connection with such merchandise.
We have also written extensively on the need to create internal guidelines to articulate which forms of social media content will be considered to be acceptable by the rights-holder and which will not. For example, a third party may create a social media fan account with the ulterior motive of “piggybacking” on the fame of a rights-holder’s brand in order to gain followers (so the account can eventually be monetized through, for example, merchandizing). Similarly, genuine fans might occasionally post unflattering or inaccurate content (e.g., “I hate this brand” type posts).
Once a rights-holder develops guidelines to identify objectionable content, the next step is to report such content to the underlying social media platform. For our readership’s ready-reference, we have compiled a list of take-down information below from some of the most popular social media platforms (please note that this information is current as of this post’s publication date, but could become outdated in the future).
Facebook:
To file a trademark and/or copyright infringement report with Facebook, a rights-holder needs to complete a Reporting a Violation or Infringement of Your Rights form (available here).
Instagram:
To file a trademark infringement report with Instagram, a rights-holder needs to complete a Trademark Report form (available here).
To file a copyright infringement report with Instagram, a rights-holder needs to complete a Copyright Report form (available here).
YouTube:
To file a trademark infringement report with YouTube, a rights-holder needs to complete a Trademark Issue form (available here).
To file a copyright infringement report with YouTube, a rights-holder needs to complete a Submit a Copyright Takedown Notice form (available here).
Twitter:
To file a trademark infringement report with Twitter, a rights-holder needs to complete a Report a Trademark Issue form (available here).
To file a copyright infringement report with Twitter, a rights-holder needs to complete a Report Copyright Infringement form (available here).
Pinterest:
To file a trademark infringement report with Pinterest, a rights-holder needs to complete a Trademark Issue Notification form (available here).
To file a copyright infringement report with Pinterest, a rights-holder needs to complete a Copyright Infringement Notification form (available here).
LinkedIn:
To file a trademark infringement report with LinkedIn, a rights-holder needs to complete a Trademark Issue Notification form (available here).
To file a copyright infringement report with LinkedIn, a rights-holder needs to complete a Copyright Infringement Notification form (available here).
If you or your company need help with removing infringing content from social media, contact us today for a free consultation.
