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Breaking Down the Legal Case Against the @BPGlobalPR Twitter Feed
One of the side-stories emerging from the BP oil spill disaster has been the popular (and fake) BP Twitter feed @BPGlobalPR. If you haven't been following along, here is a sampling of what has been coming out of @BPGlobalPR since the trouble began:
And so on.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the real BP public relations folks would be annoyed and upset by
@BPGlobalPR, but there is no indication thus far that they have tried to actually shut the satirical feed down. The Twittersphere has already anticipated this move, of course, and counter-attacked in advance:
Over at the Spam Notes blog, Venkat Balasubramani takes a look at some of the legal issues surrounding the fake BP feed, specifically whether using the @BPGlobalPR name constitutes "user name/trade name hijacking, protectible fair use, or both?"
Some of Venkat's thoughts:
1. Dilution/Tarnishment: BP's strongest cause of action may be for dilution/tarnishment, rather than garden variety infringement, because BPGlobalPR isn't selling any goods or services that are competitive with BP.
2. Cybersquatting: Use of a mark in a Twitter account handle doesn't get you much as far as UDRP or the ACPA. (See "No UDRP Relief for Post-Domain Use of Trademark")
3. Claims Against Twitter: "Claims against Twitter by BP would be ill-advised."
4. Twitter's Designation of the Account as a Parody Account: Twitter has guidelines for registering and using Twitter accounts for parody, commentary, and fan purposes. (See "Parody, Commentary, and Fan Accounts Policy.") Perhaps Twitter could "add a designation to parody/commentary accounts that lets end users know that the account in question is not an 'official account,' and is one that exists for commentary, parody, or other fair use purposes."
Read the full analysis from Spam Notes here.
Posted by Bruce Carton on June 2, 2010 at 01:14 PM | Permalink
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