Brands and agencies are responsible for ensuring that influencer behaviour on social media complies with ad disclosure rule. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has introduced a novel approach to sanctioning influencers who consistently fail to disclose ads on their Instagram accounts. Earlier this month, the ASA announced that it will take out ads of its … Continue Reading
The heirs of Argentinian soccer super star, Diego Maradona, as well as a John Doe identified only by an IP address, have been sued for trademark infringement based on their use of the name “Maradona.” The suit was filed on January 13, 2022, and is just another episode in an ongoing struggle over the rights … Continue Reading
Last year, I wrote about a ruling in the Southern District of New York, Sinclair v. Ziff Davis, 18-CV-790 (KMW), that refused to dismiss claims against a media company for embedding an Instagram post into one of its articles online. This ruling and others in federal trial courts in the Second Circuit conflict with the … Continue Reading
Embedding content from a social media site in one’s website initially seemed to be a safe harbor from a copyright infringement claim. In 2007, the Ninth Circuit adopted the so-called “server test,” ruling that in-line linking of images – now more commonly referred to as embedding – did not violate the exclusive display, copying or … Continue Reading
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) continues to focus on influencer advertising, as part of its consumer protection mission. On November 5, 2019, the FTC released an instructive “Disclosure 101” Guide and “Advice for Social Media Influencers” video to help influencers understand their legal obligations when they are spreading their influence through social media posts, … Continue Reading
In a landmark decision, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK recently ruled that, for the purposes of the CAP Code at least, a social media user may be considered a celebrity where they have 30,000 followers or more. In this case, the ASA found that an influencer breached the CAP Code when she … Continue Reading
Last year, the Global IP & Technology Law Blog covered the investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into commercially driven posts on social media, the results of which were published last week. Following the investigation (which considered potential breaches of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008), a number of prominent online … Continue Reading
With 255 million monthly active Twitter users and more than 1 billion active Facebook users, social media platforms are powerful tools for companies to build relationships with their consumers and share information about their products. Although social media offers companies a wide variety of opportunities to engage consumers, such as through conducting online promotions or … Continue Reading
Most companies by now have made their footprint in social media, including on leading platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. With 500 million Tweets being sent per day, companies need to get creative to come up with enough content to engage their consumers. One popular technique is to send Tweets that contain links to third-party content, along … Continue Reading
