The Anchor Plate : Intellectual Property Lawyers & Attorneys : BrickHouse Law Group : Open-Price Lawyering, Hourly Billing : St. Louis, Missouri

Two weeks ago, the excited tittering about crowdfunding hit a level comparable to the shrieking begat by The Beatles’ concerts at Shea Stadium. Three season cult-TV darling, “Veronica Mars,” broke all sorts of Kickstarter records when it raised over $2 million in its first twelve hours on the site.

For those of you unfamiliar with Kickstarter, it is a popular crowdfunding platform where entrepreneurial folks –  from a few St. Louisans trying to open up a gourmand donut shop (thank you, Donut Gods!) to the  filmmakers behind this year’s Oscar-winning documentary short, “Inocente” – can post a fundraising goal they hope to achieve within 30 days, and then receive pledges from backers to meet that goal. The “Veronica Mars” Kickstarter, as with many others, offers certain incentives depending on the pledge level, such as a copy of the movie, and other like “Veronica Mars” swag (similar to the NPR pledge week, which thankfully has ended for this season, and won’t prevent me from listening to “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” this Saturday).

Whether or not the “Veronica Mars” equivalent of an unidentifiable plant potted in an “I Heart NPR” coffee mug was an incentive for fans to pledge, pledge they did.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Social media is everywhere today. Where people were once hidden behind newspapers on the subway, we now see people of all ages, professions, and socioeconomic spheres glued to their iPhones, Blackberries, and other magical smart devices, desperately trying to keep up with endless streams of Tweets, Facebook updates, and LinkedIn connections. Recently, companies have begun to encourage, or even mandate that their employees develop personal Twitter accounts, Facebook feeds and LinkedIn profiles as a cheap and effective way of promoting their services and their company, usually with minimal hassle. Even as an intern, I have one. These employees are responsible for finding followers, growing their networks, and generally ensuring that their company will advertise itself to a potential consumer as often as possible.

Of course every new invention creates new problems, and courts will soon have to decide who is the actual owner of the information presented on these social networking websites. Ownership of Twitter followers has become a particularly contentious issue. On the one side, departing employees often try to keep the accounts and all the followers they’ve established and developed, while on the other side, employers often view such followers as their customers and their capitol. Further complicating matters, many employees list their company’s name as part of their Twitter handle, which only enhances the debate over which party actually owns the account. 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

In January of 2011, Facebook launched its "Sponsored Stories" ad program. As Ad Age magazine explained back then: if Starbucks, for example, buys a Sponsored Story ad, then the next time you check in or "like" a Starbucks, your updated status will run twice for all your Facebook friends: once in your news feed and again as a paid ad for Starbucks. That second time will be on the right side of each of your friends' news feeds, complete with your name and photo, and marked with the words 'Sponsored Story.' (The image on the right is the example from the Ad Age story.)

In other words, you will have become an unpaid spokesperson in a Starbucks ad. And you will have also become a potential plaintiff in Fraley, et al. v. Facebook, Inc. one of the most fascinating right-of-publicity class actions in America.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link