Social media sites are transforming not only the daily lives of consumers, but also how companies interact with consumers. Here at Morrison Foerster, across all of our practice groups, we are seeing complex, cutting-edge legal issues arising out of social media. As with the Internet boom during the mid-to-late 1990s, social media is generating new legal questions at a far faster pace than the law’s ability to provide answers to such questions. In an effort to stay on top of these emerging issues, and to keep our clients and friends informed of new developments, Morrison Foerster publishes this blog devoted to the law and business of social media.<h2>ABOUT MORRISON FOERSTER</h2>Morrison Foerster is a leading global law firm that transforms complexity into advantage for its clients. Our clients include some of the largest financial institutions, banks, consulting and accounting firms, and Fortune 100, technology, and life sciences companies. Highlighting the firm’s commitment to client service, leadership in market-changing deals and impact litigation, and values-based culture, Morrison Foerster has been repeatedly recognized as one of the top 10 firms on The American Lawyer’s A-List. Year after year, the firm receives significant recognition from Chambers and The Legal 500 across their various guides, including Global, USA, Asia‑Pacific, Europe, UK, Latin America, and FinTech Legal. Our lawyers passionately care about delivering legal excellence while living our values. Morrison Foerster has a long-standing commitment to creating a culture that respects and celebrates differences, while providing an inclusive environment. The firm has achieved Mansfield Certification Plus since 2018 as a result of successfully reaching at least 30 percent women, communities of color, and LGBTQ+ lawyer representation in a notable number of current leadership roles and committees. The firm also has a long history of commitment to the community and society through providing pro bono legal services, including litigating for civil rights and civil liberties, improving public education and fostering the wellbeing of children, advocating for veterans, promoting international human rights, enforcing the right to asylum, and safeguarding the environment.

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Aaron is the chair of the firm’s Technology Transactions Group and co-chair of the Interactive + Digital Media Group. He advises clients on a wide range of complex transactions involving intellectual property and technology, including structuring and negotiating strategic licensing, development, collaboration, procurement, and distribution deals.Aaron’s practice focuses on advising both established and emerging companies in a variety of data- and technology-intensive sectors, including software, SaaS, cloud-based technology, digital media (social media, AR/VR, gaming, streaming media, AdTech), AI, healthcare, consumer electronics, e-commerce, other online business models, and mobile applications. He also maintains an active practice counseling companies on branding and marketing, trademark licensing, and content-related transactions, as well as the intellectual property aspects of mergers, acquisitions, asset spin-offs, and private equity investments.He has represented clients such as Autodesk, Meta, OpenAI, Splunk, Konami, Kaiser Permanente, SoftBank, Visa, and Yahoo, among others.Aaron has been recognized by numerous publications for his work on market-defining technology transactions. He is currently ranked by Chambers USA for “Technology Transactions.”Aaron also serves as co-editor of Socially Aware, the firm’s award-winning newsletter and blog devoted to the law and business of social media, and regularly publishes on various IP and technology-related topics. Aaron is also a sought-after speaker on new and emerging areas of law, and is a frequent presenter and panelist at conferences and legal services programs. In addition to his active practice, Aaron regularly provides pro bono assistance to various nonprofit and charitable organizations such as Common Sense Media and the Starlight Children’s Foundation. He is a member of the board of directors of California Lawyers for the Arts.While in law school at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, Aaron served as executive editor of the California Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Following law school, Aaron served as law clerk to the Honorable William H. Orrick and the Honorable Martin J. Jenkins, both United States District Judges for the Northern District of California.

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Aaron is the chair of our Technology Transactions Group. He advises clients on a wide range of complex transactions involving intellectual property and technology, including structuring and negotiating strategic licensing, development, collaboration, procurement, and distribution deals. Aaron’s practice focuses on advising both established and emerging companies in a variety of data– and technology–intensive sectors, including software, SaaS, cloud computing, AR/VR, AI, gaming, healthcare, consumer electronics, social media, e–commerce, other online business models, and mobile applications. He also maintains an active practice counseling companies on the intellectual property aspects of mergers, acquisitions, asset spin–offs, and private equity investments.

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Lawrence Gallick is of counsel in the firm’s Austin office and a member of the Technology Transactions Group.Lawrence focuses his practice on technology transactions and licensing matters. His diverse experience includes advising on SaaS agreements, cross-licensing agreements, research and collaboration agreements, development agreements, and distribution agreements. He counsels a broad range of companies across the software, hardware, life sciences, biotech and FinTech spaces, as well as other entities including universities.He advises clients in connection with general corporate matters including contract negotiations, and leasing and technology placement agreements.Lawrence also serves as co-editor of <a href="https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/" target="_blank">Socially Aware</a>, the firm’s award-winning newsletter and blog devoted to the law and business of social media, and regularly publishes on various IP and technology-related topics.Prior to joining the firm, Lawrence was counsel at another major law firm. Before earning his law degree, Lawrence was a web consultant, project manager, and web developer in Portland, Oregon, where he managed and consulted on projects using industry methodologies and performed custom development and integration of content management systems.Lawrence was named a Super Lawyers “Rising Star” in 2015 and 2018–2022, and is licensed in both California and New York. Lawrence earned his J.D. from the University at Buffalo School of Law, where he was the electronic systems editor for the Buffalo Law Review and awarded the ABA-BNA Award for Excellence in the Study of Intellectual Property Law.

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Anthony Ramirez is a partner in the Technology Transactions Group in the New York office of Morrison Foerster.Anthony advises clients on general commercial and transactional matters. He regularly advises companies on the IP aspects of their M&A transactions. His clients include technology, digital media and content for television and music, financial services, and communications companies with diverse intellectual property assets and issues.His practice focuses on the legal aspects of developing, licensing, and commercializing technology and intellectual property, as well as negotiating general commercial contracts, including outsourcing transactions, as well as content and data licenses. He regularly assists clients with legal issues relating to licensing and commercialization of digital media and content, digital content that is distributed over the Internet or streamed, mobile applications and social media, as well as the licensing of recorded music for distribution via digital platforms. Anthony is also experienced with issues relating to open-source software, software development, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud-based technology, and protection of proprietary information.Anthony has extensive experience working on matters involving disruptive technologies, such as blockchain. He has helped fintech clients with general intellectual property issues in connection with terms of service for online financial products and services.Anthony is an integral part of the outside pro bono legal team for nonprofit organizations based in New York, including advising clients on legal issues regarding entertainment, social media, privacy rights, and the negotiation of outsourcing and service agreements. Anthony received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 2009. He received his B.S. from Cornell University in 2004.

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Anthony Ramirez is a partner in the Technology Transactions Group in the New York office of Morrison Foerster. He advises clients on general commercial and transactional matters. His clients include technology, media, and communications companies with considerable intellectual property assets. His practice focuses on the legal aspects of licensing and commercializing technology and intellectual property, as well as negotiating general commercial contracts. He also regularly assists clients with legal issues relating to mobile applications and social media.

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In a precedent-setting ruling, the Washington Court of Appeals in <a href="http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/723219.pdf">Thomson v. Doe</a> 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 defamation plaintiff to unmask an anonymous defendant, that “plaintiff must do more than simply plead his case.”The plaintiff in the case, Florida divorce attorney Deborah Thomson, filed a defamation suit against an anonymous poster of Avvo reviews. Claiming to be a former client, the reviewer stated that Thomson, among other things, failed to live up to her fiduciary duties, failed to subpoena critical documents, and failed to adequately represent the reviewer’s interests.After Avvo refused Thomson’s subpoena seeking the anonymous reviewer’s identity, Thomson moved to compel compliance with the subpoena. The Washington State trial court denied Thomson’s motion and she appealed, presenting the Washington State Court of Appeals with what the court acknowledged was an issue of first impression in the Evergreen state: What evidentiary standard should a court apply when deciding a defamation plaintiff’s motion to reveal an anonymous speaker’s identity?The court began its analysis by describing the holdings of the two leading cases on the issue: New Jersey’s Dendrite Int’l, Inc. v. Doe No. 3, which held that, to unmask anonymous defendants in defamation cases, the plaintiff must “produce sufficient evidence supporting each element of its cause of action on a prima facie basis; and Delaware’s <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1472540/doe-v-cahill/">Doe v. Cahill</a>, which established that plaintiffs seeking to uncover the identities of anonymous speakers/defendants must clear a slightly higher evidentiary threshold—proof that their claims would survive a summary judgment motion.The court also discussed the one court that “has significantly strayed from Dendrite and Cahill”: the Virginia Court of Appeals. In <a href="http://www.citizen.org/documents/yelp-v-hadeed-virginia-supreme-court-opinion.pdf">Yelp, Inc. v. Hadeed Carpet</a>, another case <a href="https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2015/04/28/court-protects-anonymity-of-yelp-users/">we recently covered</a> at Socially Aware, the Virginia Court of Appeals “declined to adopt either test, instead applying a state statute that required a lower standard of proof.” Specifically, Hadeed held that, in the Thomson court’s words, “a defamation plaintiff seeking an anonymous speaker’s identity must establish a good faith basis to contend that the speaker committed defamation.”The Thomson court then cited with approval the Ninth Circuit’s approach in In re Anonymous Online Speakers. In that case, the Ninth Circuit determined that, when deciding whether to require disclosure of an anonymous speaker’s identity, the nature of the speech at issue should inform the choice of evidentiary standard. Holding that an online review of an attorney’s services is not merely commercial speech—which, the court explained, would warrant the lowest level of protection—the court rejected the Hadeed (good faith) standard. Since the Avvo review did not qualify as political speech either, the court also discounted the highest level of protection. The court then determined that the “motion to dismiss standard” was “inadequate to protect this level of speech” because, in a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/notice_pleading">notice pleading</a> state like Washington, “a defamation plaintiff would need only to allege the elements of the claim, without supporting evidence.”Finally, the Thomson court addressed the “two remaining standards”: prima facie (Dendrite) and summary judgment (Cahill). The court ultimately decided that the prima facie standard was appropriate because the anonymous reviewer had yet to appear in the case and the plaintiff, therefore, was not in a position to file a summary judgment motion.The court nevertheless observed that “the important feature” of both the prima facie and the summary judgment standards “is to emphasize that the plaintiff must do more than simply plead his case.” In other words, both standards require “supporting evidence … before the speaker is unmasked.” Under that standard, the court held, “Thomson’s motion must fail. As Thomson freely admits, she presented no evidence to support her motion.”

Aaron is the chair of the firm’s Technology Transactions Group and co-chair of the Interactive + Digital Media Group. He advises clients on a wide range of complex transactions involving intellectual property and technology, including structuring and negotiating strategic licensing, development, collaboration, procurement, and distribution deals.

Aaron Rubin

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Washington State Court Refuses to Unmask Anonymous Online Reviewer

Washington State Court Refuses to Unmask Anonymous Online Reviewer

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 s

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 word “like” was primarily a verb (and an interjection used by “valley girls”). You could have likes and dislikes in the sense of preferences, but you couldn’t give someone a like, claim to own a like or assert legal rights in likes. Today, however, a company’s social media pages and profiles, and the associated likes, followers and connections, are often considered valuable business assets. Courts have come to various conclusions regarding whether likes and similar social media constructs constitute property, but one thing is clear: Every company that uses social media should have in place clear policies regarding employee social media use and ownership of business-related social media accounts.Employees who manage a company’s social media accounts often insert themselves as the “voice” of the brand and establish a rapport with the company’s fans and followers. Without clear policies that address ownership of social media accounts, and clearly distinguish between the company’s accounts and employees’ personal accounts, your client may find itself in a dispute when these employees leave the company and try to take the company’s fans and followers with them.Read a more detailed description of “likes” as assets <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2014/11/04/whats-in-a-like/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.Dirty LaundryIt comes as no surprise that employees frequently use social media to complain about managers and coworkers, pay, work conditions and other aspects of their employment. Companies often would prefer not to air these issues publicly, so they establish policies and impose discipline when employees’ social media activity becomes problematic. Companies need to be careful, however, that their policies and disciplinary actions comply with applicable law.A number of National Labor Relations Board decisions have examined whether employees’ statements on social media constitute “concerted activity”—activity by two or more employees that provides mutual aid or protection regarding terms or conditions of employment—for purposes of the National Labor Relations Act (which, notably, applies regardless of whether the employees are unionized or not). Companies also need to be careful to comply with state statutes limiting employer access to employees’ personal social media accounts, such as California Labor Code Section 980, which prohibits an employer from asking an employee or applicant to disclose personal social media usernames or passwords, access personal social media in the presence of the employer, or divulge personal social media.Read more about the intersection of social media policies and labor law <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2014/01/22/uncovering-a-line-in-the-sand-employee-social-media-use-and-the-nlra/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a> and <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2013/01/16/social-media-and-the-national-labor-relations-act-what-employers-need-to-know-in-drafting-and-updating-their-social-media-policies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.Terms of (Ab)useCompanies often consider their social media pages and profiles to be even more important than are the companies’ own websites for marketing and maintaining customer engagement. But a company’s own website has one advantage over a third party social media platform: The company sets its own terms for use of its website, while the third party social media platform is subject to terms of use imposed by the platform operator. And, in many cases, the terms imposed on users of social media platforms are onerous and make little distinction between individual users using the platform just for recreation and corporate users who depend on the platform for their businesses.Social media terms of use often grant platform operators broad licenses to content posted on the platform, impose one-sided indemnification obligations on users, and permit platform operators to terminate users’ access with or without cause. You may have little luck negotiating modifications to such online contracts for your clients, but you can at least inform your clients of the terms that govern their use of social media, so that they can weigh the costs and benefits.Read more about social media platforms’ terms of use <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2014/10/06/implementing-and-enforcing-online-terms-of-use/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>, <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2014/09/23/to-click-or-not-to-click-ninth-circuit-rejects-browsewrap-arbitration-clause/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2013/12/03/potential-limitations-placed-on-unilateral-right-to-modify-terms-of-use/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.Same as It Ever WasWhen it comes to using social media for advertising, the media may be new but the rules are the same as ever. Companies that advertise through social media—especially by leveraging user endorsements—need to comply with Section 5 of the FTC Act, which bars “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” Bloggers and others who endorse products must actually use the product and must disclose any “material connections” they have with the product providers (for example, a tech blogger reviewing a mobile phone that she received for free from the manufacturer should disclose that fact). Because this information is likely to affect consumers’ assessment of an endorsement, failure to disclose may be deemed deceptive. So if you have a client that uses endorsements to promote its products, make sure to brush up on the FTC “Dot Com Disclosures” and other relevant FTC guidance.Read more about endorsement disclosure obligations <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2014/12/03/ftc-enforcement-action-confirms-that-ad-disclosure-obligations-extend-to-endorsements-made-in-social-media/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.Good RepAs noted, a company’s social media pages, followers, etc., may constitute valuable business assets. But buyers in M&A transactions often neglect such assets when formulating the seller’s reps and warranties. Buyers should consider asking the seller to disclose all social media accounts that the target company uses and to represent and warrant that none of the target’s social media account names infringe any third party trademark or other IP rights, that all use of the accounts complies with applicable terms of service, and that the target has implemented policies providing that the company (and not any employee) owns all business-related social media accounts and imposing appropriate guidelines regarding employee use of social media.Finally, if you have clients that use social media, it’s important to be familiar with the popular social media platforms and their (ever-changing) rules and features. Learning to spot these issues isn’t going to turn you into the next Shakira—as of this writing, the most liked person on Facebook with well over 100 million likes—but your clients will surely appreciate your help as they traverse the social media maze.Read more about social media assets in M&A transactions <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2015/01/12/good-rep-social-media-assets-in-ma-transactions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.<div>This piece originally appeared in The Recorder.</div><div></div>

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Five Social Media Law Issues To Discuss With Your Clients

Five Social Media Law Issues To Discuss With Your Clients

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

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 <a href="https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2015/05/01/status-updates-94/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discussed</a>, some courts deciding <a href="http://www.4dca.org/opinions/Jan%202015/01-07-15/4D14-138.op.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">physical</a> and emotional injury claims have held that the photos and status updates that the plaintiffs in those cases posted to Facebook were relevant to proving or disproving those claims. But are they always? A <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/users/2015/04/social_media_and_the_law_if_you_re_claiming_emotional_distress_don_t_appear.single.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent column in Slate</a> points out that some judges and experts are questioning whether a person’s social media posts are adequate reflections of his or her emotional well-being. In one 2013 case over alleged disability discrimination—the plaintiff claimed her work supervisor mocked her after she told him she’d been diagnosed with adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—a federal district court judge in New York held that “The fact that an individual may express some degree of joy, happiness, or sociability on certain occasions sheds little light on the issue of whether he or she is actually suffering emotional distress… For example, a severely depressed person may have a good day or several good days and choose to post about those days and avoid posting about moods more reflective of his or her actual emotional state.” We at <a href="https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Socially Aware</a> tend to agree with this more skeptical view of the extent to which one’s “social” life reflects one’s real life. After all, if <a href="http://www.techtimes.com/articles/15498/20140914/photoshop-fake-vacation-facebook-artist.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a woman can fake an entire vacation on Facebook</a>, many of the platform’s users are likely posting status updates and pictures that are out of sync with their actual moods.Cutting words. Stories about people being fired or having a job offer rescinded because of their social media missteps have been around almost as long as social media itself, but <a href="http://time.com/money/3019899/10-facebook-twitter-mistakes-lost-job-millennials-viral/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">they usually involve “what were they thinking?” types of behavior</a>. We recently came across one that is a little less clear-cut. An engineer who’d just gotten job offers from Uber and Zenefits tried to crowdsource information that would help him decide between the two employers by posting <a href="http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-career-Uber-or-Zenefits" target="_blank" rel="noopener">what he considered to be the pros and cons of each</a> opportunity on Quora, a Q&A social network that allows users to pose questions to the community. He said good things about both companies, but in his “cons” list for Zenefits, he wrote, “My biggest problem with Zenefits is that it isn’t a buzzword like Uber. Most people won’t know what Zenefits is (or so I think). I think that this isn’t as exciting a brand name to have on your resume when applying to the likes of Google.” Zenefits CEO and co-founder Parker Conrad saw the Quora post and responded, right on the thread: “Definitely not Zenefits (n.b.—we are revoking the questioner’s offer to work at Zenefits),” he wrote. “We really value people who ‘get’ what we do and who *want* to work here, specifically. It’s not for everyone, but there are enough ppl out there who do want to work here that we can afford to be selective.” Conrad later edited his response, deleting the part about revoking the engineer’s offer, but his decision stands: The engineer is no longer welcome at Zenefits. Reactions on Twitter went both ways, The Washington Post reported. And <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/losing-job-offer-quora-uber-vs-zenefits-tai-tran" target="_blank" rel="noopener">some commentators</a> felt that both parties were at fault.Here today . . . Perhaps inspired by social media users’ concerns that their posts will be used against them in the ways we’ve just described—and, in the case of Cyber Dust, billionaire investor Mark Cuban’s receipt of a subpoena for his own text messages—<a href="http://www.saydaily.com/2014/09/disappearing-updates" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new disappearing messaging apps</a> are springing up all the time. One that recently <a href="http://linkis.com/snip.ly/S2UNU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">got the attention of the crowd at a tech conference in New York</a> is the photo-sharing app Rewind. Rewind allows you to create photo timelines through which the members of your network can scroll. As a result of the scrolling feature, a whole set of photos only takes up the space of a single photo in users’ feeds. The posts vanish after 24 hours. According to Tech Crunch, by making the photos disappear, the app’s creators hope “to elicit the same sort of spontaneity as Snapchat Stories,” which have been heralded as the future of social media.

Status Updates: Facebook Posts—Reliable Evidence?; Quora Post Costs Applicant a Job; a New Ephemeral Messaging App