Business Services News

Could someone be impersonating your business? - Jon Bloor

Whatever your views as a business owner on the merits of Twitter, it is likely that you will have seen some of the press coverage surrounding the service recently.

The micro-blogging service, which allows users to post short updates of 140 characters has seen a massive increase in use by businesses and high profile individuals. These range from charities (the RNLI posts updates of its latest rescues at http://www.twitter.com/RNLIrescues) to major broadband and mobile telephone companies (who use it as another customer care and feedback channel), Members of Parliament and Chambers of Commerce.

You will probably have definite views about whether it is appropriate for your business to participate in this kind of marketing. However, even if "tweeting" is the last thing you would ever want your business to be involved in, it may still pay to take a more detailed look at the service.
Anyone can register a Twitter account, which means that there is nothing to stop another user from registering an account in the name of you or your business and broadcasting messages which appear to come from you. There have been a number of high profile cases of impersonation recently with the targets including those as varied as CNN, the leader of Plymouth Council, the Austin Texas Police Department and the Dalai Llama!

Fortunately Twitter does have a clear and robust policy on impersonation and will usually act to suspend the offending account if it receives a complaint from the genuine business or individual. Full details of the policy and procedures can be found at http://www.twitter.com. There is an exception for accounts which are used for the purposes of genuine parody; however, even in this case it may be possible for the offending username to be changed to make it clear that it is a fake or parody account. The key point is that the onus is on the genuine person or business to make the complaint and the first step to this is discovering that there is a problem.

A visit to Twitter's search function at http://www.search.twitter.com will take 5 minutes and will let you know whether anyone is impersonating you or your business. It will also let you see what your customers, competitors and others might be saying about your business - which in itself might start you thinking about whether your own presence on the service would be appropriate to address and deal with these comments. Google also indexes tweets so a search here can be useful.

Twitter is also in the process of testing a "verified account" system. Whilst this will apply to high profile individuals only in the first instance there may be scope for this to include businesses in the future. The Twitter homepage provides a feedback form where you can express your interest if this could be relevant to your business.

Twitter will also take action if another user's account or tweets give rise to a breach of a registered trademark of your business. Again, the onus will be on you to make a complaint in order to trigger this process.

Twitter is used as an example in this article, but the same issues apply to a greater or lesser extent across other similar social networking services. Whether or not you wish to be involved in these services we would advise any business to carry out a periodic audit to make sure that no impersonation is taking place and to take any necessary action.

Some advisors also suggest registering your business's name with these services as a protective measure to prevent it from being registered by others. Given that this is usually free it may be a sensible precaution, but you should note that some services (including Twitter) actually have a policy of removing inactive accounts. This may reduce the long term benefit of this action if you don't intend to actively use the accounts.

For more information on the issues raised in this article or to discuss any matters relating to business or company law, please contact Jon Bloor in the corporate team on 0151 647 9381.

This article provides a summary of a recent case/change in law/news item. It is intended for general information purposes only and is not to be relied upon. It does not constitute legal advice and should not be treated under any circumstances as a substitute for legal advice. Lees Solicitors LLP does not accept any responsibility for any loss that may arise from reliance upon the information contained within this article. The copyright in this article is owned by Lees Solicitors LLP and permission must be sought before reproduction or publishing.

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