1. IP ISSUES IN SOCIAL MEDIA Divya Raman Corporate Department Altacit Global Email: info@altacit.com Website: www.altacit.com

3. Media for social interaction, as a superset beyond social communication.

5. Intellectual Property Patent. Design. Copyright. Geographical Indications. Trademark.

6. IP Issues in Social Media Social networking sites present several risks, including trademark infringement and copyright violation issues. For example, a company's valuable trademarks could appear without authorization on a user's profile page or as part of a user name ("name squatting") on a social networking site.

8. While others recognize that the copyright remains with the owner.

11. Customer List - Trade Secret Consider, for a second, a company that considers its customer list to be a trade secret and seeks to protect such information. A salesperson who identifies those customers as “friends” on Facebook, or “connections” on LinkedIn, or some other similar status on another social media website, could destroy the secret nature of such a list. It also can lead to that salesperson, in essence, appropriating that information should he or she leave to go to work for a competitor.

12. Case Laws One recently reported high-profile case involved Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, whose identity was hijacked on Twitter by an imposter. The suit filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, which has since been dismissed, claimed that someone created an account under La Russa's name and posted tweets, giving the false impression that the comments came from La Russa. The suit also said that the comments were "derogatory and demeaning" and thus damaged La Russa's trademark rights.

13. There also have been reports of corporate sabotage. For example, it was reported that a public relations firm allegedly set up a Twitter account in the name of a rival firm. The firm then allegedly disseminated malicious tweets for two months before the competing firm realized that its identity had been hijacked.

16. To minimize the risks of trademark hijacking, trademark infringement and damage to brand reputation that may occur on social media networking sites, it is advisable to take precautionary and proactive steps. Those steps include reserving company names and key permutations of company names with social networking sites, developing a presence in social networking communities, assigning company employees who are responsible for overseeing the monitoring process, understanding terms of use for each of the major social networks and developing consistent enforcement procedures.

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