How to navigate IP challenges in the rise of social media
Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate, connect, and share information. While social media has created immense opportunities for engagement and expression, it has also raised a myriad of legal challenges, particularly concerning intellectual property (IP) rights including issues around content ownership, digital rights management, deep fakes etc. It, therefore, becomes important to understand these challenges and strive to achieve a balance between social media and the IP rights. Broadly, IPs are creations of the mind and key IPs include trade marks, copyrights, and patents. Trade marks are essentially brand names that identify one business from another. Copyrights are creative works that include literary content, music recordings, films etc. Patents protect inventions.
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Increasing social media role and IP rights.
Virtually all social media content, whether a post uploaded on ‘X’ or a picture on Instagram or a video on YouTube, involves IP creation and use. From an IP point of view, one of the key issues to understand is “Who owns such uploaded content”? Undoubtedly, social media platforms offer a dynamic and engaging platform to users and content creators to express themselves and share content with the public and their followers. However, such opportunities for expression are not unfettered and are bound by laws and regulations, including IP considerations.
The broad thumb-rule is that if a user has created their own original content (whether a post, song, or video or otherwise), they own the IP rights in that content. Almost all social media platforms clearly recognise these “user generated content” as belonging to the user.
