How social media challenge the brandscape for trademark holders1

How Social Media challenge the brandscape for trademark holders Danny Friedmann, PhD Cand. CUHK, founder of IP Dragon

7 th Annual Asia-Pacific IP Forum
Organised by Managing Intellectual Property and Asialaw.com
September 1 and 2, 2010

Challenges for Trademark holders
Trademark holders need to:
preemptively register all variations of their trademark at all social media sites
use them, otherwise they could be eliminated
monitor for trademark infringements
Conclusion : time consuming and costly

Interoperability multiplies challenges
Tweet a message including a trademark infringement on Twitter
Retweet on Facebook
Retweet on LinkedIn
Retweet on Blogger
Blogger content republished via RSS on several sites
Conclusion : trademark infringements couldbe eternally recycled

Marketing challenge
renren “everybody” (formerly XiaoNei “on campus”) changed its focus from students to all classes; Baidu Tieba made same change
Bigger market; exclude possibility of school-wide online organisation: unite and rule
Conclusion : more difficult for trademark holders to reach target audience

Service providers are going to dominate
Past: domain name disputes ruled by
UDRP and trademark law (public)
Present: unauthorised use trademark in 3rd level domain names and content ruled by Terms of Use/trademark law (private/public)
Future: unauthorised use trademark ruled by Terms of Use (private)
Conclusion : privatisation of problems privatisation of solutions

TP can be for trademark holders what CC is for copyright holders
Service providers set rules: in exchange need to assume responsibility for enforcement and liability for non-enforcement
Trademarks holders need to become pro-active (TP); authorise via license how their trademark can be used online and put this info in database: saves costs, regain control over trademark use
TP coupled with database: service providers can automatically monitor whether there are any unauthorised trademark uses at their sites and enforce

Thank you!
IP Dragon

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How social media challenge the brandscape for trademark holders1

by ip dragon on Sep 04, 2010

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How social media challenge the brandscape for trademark holders1 — Presentation Transcript