Chicago IP Attorney & Lawyer : R. David Donoghue : Chicago IP Litigation Blog

Next Tuesday, September 29, at noon central, Adrian Dayton and I are giving an ALI-ABA audio seminar titled:  IP Issues in Social Media.  Dayton and I will discuss the growing importance of social media for businesses and look at strategies for protecting and promoting your brands with a focus on social media sites such as Twitter.  Click here to register for the program.  I hope to "see" you there.

Here is more detail about the program from ALI-ABA:

Why Attend?

This audio seminar takes a practical look at the wide world of electronic social media with a focus on protecting and leveraging intellectual property through the intelligent use of such media by both companies and their employees. What are people saying about your clients on-line? What is being said about your firm? How can you stop cybersquatters posing as your clients on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter? Listen to IP attorney-blogger David Donoghue and social media attorney/expert Adrian Dayton to learn how to leverage social media in a way that will not only protect your clients, but will help build their brands.

What You Will Learn

Social media is a critical element of the Internet and of every company's marketing plan, whether or not the company affirmatively employs social media. Understand how electronic social media impacts a company's intellectual property is important to every company—and to every practitioner, IP or otherwise. Taught by a duo of experts in the field, this one-hour audio-only program will cover:

• The importance of protecting your social media identity;
   
• A look at recent Twitter-squatting cases;
   
• How you safely invite employees to use social media (including key components of social media policies);
   
• How to create strategic social media policies without forfeiting the benefits;
   
• Why banning employee use of social media can be dangerous; and
   
• How to use social media in an effective way on just 15 minutes a day.

Invest just 60 minutes at your home or office to learn about current developments in electronic social media and the implications of intellectual property law (copyright, trademark and patent law) on new social media networks and the like. This teleseminar comes to you live on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009, 1:00-2:00 pm EDT, via your phone or your computer. Its format will allow for questions to be submitted to the panel via email during the program. Corresponding course material may be downloaded or viewed online, but they may not necessarily be followed during the presentation.

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I have written about the legal issues surrounding social networking sites (click here and here to read those posts).  I even did an ALI-ABA teleseminar with Eric Goldman yesterday discussing, among other things, how the Communications Decency Act protects social networking sites against suit based on third party content published on the sites.  But Julie Kay's National Law Journal article yesterday -- click here to read it -- provided a new angle on the power of social networking sites in the courtroom. 

It is no surprise that lawyers, either alone or assisted by jury consultants, research juror backgrounds, and use their research during voir dire and to inform their trial presentations, in particular opening and closing arguments.  Of course, internet research has been a cornerstone of those efforts for years.  But social networking sites have vastly increased the amount of information available about the average person.  Instead of learning someone's Turkey Trot 5k time and one or two newspaper quotes, you now may be able to see their entire resume on LinkedIn, read about major life events on FaceBook, or even read their personal, daily thoughts on a blog.  Kay reports that the information is a valuable fact checking tool, acting as a backstop to information provided in a jury questionnaire.

Additionally, blogs can tell you a lot about a juror, that the juror might not be inclined to disclose in open court or on a questionnaire. To illustrate this point, Kay quotes Anne Reed of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren -- who writes Deliberations, one of my favorite legal blogs. Reed tells the story of "Erin" a relatively prominent Florida blogger who blogged that she was a juror several days after posting that: "I totally understand how innocent people that go to prison turn into hardened criminals . . . ." Reed explains that the lawyers might not have struck Erin for her blogging, but that it was critical information to have in the decisionmaking process:

"You'd hate to leave Erin on your jury without having seen her writing," said Reed. "A juror's blog tells you things about the jurors that she probably won't tell you herself."

Kay also quotes Holland & Knight litigator Dan Small who raises an important and often overlooked note of caution. Small is concerned that invading jurors' privacy via internet research could make jurors very uncomfortable and is a substantial invasion for people performing their civic duty:

"You are taking people who are doing their civic duty and didn't sign up to have their whole life probed," Small said. "It scares people. They wonder: 'Are they going to hack into our e-mails next?' The Internet in so many areas creates an extraordinary conflict between the desire for information and the desire for privacy."

Of course, there is a real question as to whether anything posted on the internet, without password protection or some other privacy protections, can be considered private in anyway. But there is little doubt that knowing their backgrounds were researched and their FaceBook pages were read could make jurors uncomfortable and learning that their backgrounds have been probed could turn jurors against the lawyers or their clients. So, at a minimum, the information needs to be used carefully and discreetly.

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