Socially Aware

August 10, 2015 - First Amendment, Online Reviews, Litigation
Washington State Court Refuses to Unmask Anonymous Online Reviewer
By: Aaron P. Rubin
In a precedent-setting ruling, the Washington Court of Appeals in Thomson v. Doe refused to grant a motion to compel brought by a defamation plaintiff who had subpoenaed the lawyer-review site Avvo.com seeking the identity of an anonymous online reviewer, holding that, for a
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June 30, 2015 - Online Promotions, Terms of Use, Labor Law, Copyright, Employment Law, Arbitration, IP, Litigation
Five Social Media Law Issues To Discuss With Your Clients
By: Aaron P. Rubin
The explosive growth of social media has clients facing legal questions that didn’t even exist a few short years ago. Helping your clients navigate this muddled legal landscape will have them clicking “like” in no time. What’s in a Like? Not long ago, the
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May 20, 2015 - Status Updates, Disappearing Content, E-Discovery, Discovery, Litigation
Status Updates: Facebook Posts—Reliable Evidence?; Quora Post Costs Applicant a Job; a New Ephemeral Messaging App
Facebook: Fact or fiction? These days, courts are more and more frequently faced with disputes over whether, as part of the discovery process, a litigant should be entitled to view the opposing party’s social media posts. As we’ve discussed , some courts deciding physical
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May 18, 2015 - E-Discovery, Discovery, Litigation
Effort to Hide Facebook Evidence by Deactivating Account Ends Badly for Louisiana Man
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
As social media has become ubiquitous, courts are wrestling with more discovery disputes involving social media accounts. In a recent case, Crowe v. Marquette Transportation Co. Gulf-Inland, LLC , the plaintiff deactivated his Facebook account in an effort to be able to claim that
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May 13, 2015 - Trademark, Litigation
#Trademarks?: Hashtags as Trademarks
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Hashtags have become ubiquitous in social media, but their status as intellectual property—particularly as trademarks—is still developing. First adopted by Twitter users to link user posts, hashtags are character strings preceded by the “#” symbol that generate a link to all other posts containing
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May 11, 2015 - Copyright, IP, Litigation
Rolling With the Punches: The Fight Over Livestreaming
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Boxing fans eagerly awaited the May 2, 2015, championship match between boxers Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. But the fight also drew the interest of those following online video apps Meerkat and Periscope. Launched at the end of February 2015, Meerkat is a
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April 28, 2015 - First Amendment, Privacy, Defamation, Litigation
Court Protects Anonymity of Yelp Users
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
Virginia’s highest court recently held that Yelp could not be forced to turn over the identities of anonymous online reviewers that a Virginia carpet-cleaning owner claimed tarnished his business. In the summer of 2012, Joseph Hadeed, owner of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, sued seven anonymous Yelp
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November 24, 2014 - Terms of Use, Litigation
Forced to Cyber-Spy: Court Rules Parents Can Be Held Negligent for Child’s Facebook Activity
By: Aaron P. Rubin
Are parents now liable for what their kids post to Facebook? According to a recent decision in the Georgia Court of Appeals, they are. The Georgia Court of Appeals held that the parents of a seventh-grade student could be found negligent for failing to
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November 04, 2014 - Privacy, Employment Law, Litigation
What’s in a Like?
By: Aaron P. Rubin
In the pre-Facebook era, the word “like” was primarily a verb (and an interjection sprinkled throughout valley girls’ conversations). Although you could have likes and dislikes in the sense of preferences, you could not give someone a like, claim to own a like or
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October 16, 2014 - Litigation
New York Family Court Magistrate Allows Unprecedented Service of Process via Facebook; Will Others Follow?
In a little-noticed decision, Matter of Noel v. Maria , Support Magistrate Gregory L. Gliedman—a Staten Island, New York family court official—recently permitted a father seeking to modify his child support payments to serve process on the child’s mother by sending her a digital
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