Olga Lexell writes jokes for a living, and like many other witty writers and comedians, she shares her original jokes on Twitter. Just don’t think it’s OK to copy and paste one of her jokes into your own tweet without giving her an attribution. To Lexell, doing so amounts to copyright infringement, and Twitter has backed her up by removing several infringing tweets. In a recent post about her stolen Jokes, Lexell makes a compelling case against the alleged copyright infringers, saying, “I’m telling you, firmly, that you have no right to monetize my ideas. When you copy and paste someone else’s writing and do not credit them, you are plagiarizing their work.” Well said!

You Need to Follow a Process to Delete Infringing Tweets

While you won't find Twitter policing tweets for joke stealers, they do take copyright infringement seriously. For copyrightable works, Twitter will usually take down such offending tweets, but you have to follow the process like Lexell did.

Either the copyright owner, or an agent thereof, does need to file a legitimate, written takedown request on Twitter in order for the tweets to be removed.

Providing an avenue for copyright owners to protect their content also helps protect qualified service providers, such as Twitter, from copyright liability stemming from infringers using their services. This protection is included under one of the “safe harbor provisions” of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Protecting Trademarks on Twitter Can Be More Complicated

Trademark protection on Twitter is more hit and miss. Often, Twitter won’t take down infringing trademarks. Why? For two reasons: They don’t want to police other parties’ intellectual property rights, and there is no equivalent DMCA protection (or safe harbor provision) for trademarks.

With general trademark infringement, unless it’s egregious, Twitter likely won’t take it down. If you want them to take down a tweet or Twitter account, it typically has to be due to copyright notice, impersonation or defamation.

Impersonation Isn’t OK, Parody and Fan Accounts Are Welcome

If someone has clearly created an imposter account, Twitter will often shut those accounts off, because there is impersonation going on. According to Twitter's impersonation policy, “Twitter accounts portraying another person in a confusing or deceptive manner may be permanently suspended under the Twitter impersonation policy.”

On the other hand, if the account is considered a parody, commentary or fan account, Twitter welcomes those. You do need to follow strict guidelines including not using an exact trademark or logo of the subject in the avatar. The account name also can’t be exactly the same as “the account subject without some other distinguishing word, such as ‘not,’ ‘fake,’ or ‘fan.’”

Copyright Infringement Does Allow for Damages

Normally in the case of social media, people just want the infringing content taken down, and they don’t go after damages. However, under the copyright statute, there are basically three categories of damages you could consider.

In order to qualify for the first two, statutory damages and attorney’s fees, you need to have registered your copyright, generally before the infringement began.

The third category is actual damages, such as lost licensing revenue. The plaintiff could ask for the amount they would have charged somebody to license the work, or go after the ill-gotten profits the infringer achieved, that can be attributed to the infringing work.

You Can Seek Damages for Other Harms and Violations of IP Rights on Twitter

If someone posts defamatory content about you on social media, you could pursue damages. Other areas where you may be able to seek damages from social media posts include violation of rights of publicity or the right of privacy, which can happen in celebrity cases.

If someone exposes something very private or embarrassing about another party to the world, tells a lie about someone that is damaging and embarrassing, or tries to profit from a celebrity’s likeness, they may be violating rights of privacy and/or rights of publicity.

Thanks to Social Media, It’s a Lot Easier to Violate IP Rights Today

Not so long ago, it wasn’t very easy to share a video with friends. Now it’s easy to get thousands or even millions of eyeballs on it. You can even violate a host of intellectual property rights by posting your Selfie on social media.

The rise of social media and technology has made it so much easier for millions of people to commit copyright infringement, because it’s so easy to share a wide range of content with just a couple of clicks.

Take Steps to Protect Your Copyrightable Works and Be Vigilant

Anytime someone shares a portion of a creative work, there is a potential copyright infringement problem. Unfortunately, many people don’t even think about that, because they follow the old adage that the internet is free, because it’s in the public domain.

The best step to protecting a copyrightable work is to register it with the copyright office, and make sure you mark the work with a copyright notice. A reputable IP attorney can assist with this process. You could also take a lesson from Olga Lexell. She spoke up – both TO Twitter and ON Twitter – and her message is being heard far and wide.

People may continue to steal Lexell’s jokes and those of other writers, but hopefully her diligence in fighting back will urge potential infringers to think twice before they copy and paste a tweet without giving credit where credit is due.

Photo Source: Dollar Photo Club

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