Who Owns Your Company’s Social Media Accounts?
It happens every day. An employee takes over the responsibility of managing the social media accounts for an organization. Maybe it’s even their full-time job. The employee uses those accounts to promote the business, yet it takes on a persona that closely resembles the employee. The employee uses their individual user id and password and before you know it, they’ve taken a kind of ownership of the social media accounts.
Where does this fall under the company property umbrella? You would think it would be very clear—the company owns its advertising media, no matter what form it takes, right? But, what about a social media profile and its content? It can be so personal to the individual producing the thoughts. It’s their perspective, even though it might be derived from company information. Where does that fall?
An article on the subject, by DiMuroGinsberg attorney Jayna Genti, appears in the September, 2018 issue of the Virginia Employment Law Letter. It discusses a case involving a Virginia newspaper that recently asked a Virginia federal judge to force a former reporter to turn over access and use of what the newspaper claims is the company’s Twitter account. The reporter felt he personally engaged readers and subscribers to the account and followers to his reporting in particular. He felt it was something he could take with him to his next paper.
If you would like to obtain a copy of Jayna’s article entitled “Who Owns Your Company’s Social Media Accounts?”, or if you would like to subscribe to the Virginia Employment Law Letter, please contact Stephanie West at swest@dimuro.com.