Tag: Legal Issues
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10 Dos and Don’ts When Blowing the Whistle on Your Own Company
Late last year, Michael Woodford shocked the business world as CEO of a multinational conglomerate by blowing the whistle on his own company — Japan’s Olympus Corporation. Within two weeks of being appointed chief executive officer at Olympus, Woodford was fired when he continued a personal inquiry regarding $1.7 billion in questionable mergers and acquisitions.…
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NLRB Slams Costco On Social Media Use Policy: What It Means For Your Business
A ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in a case involving Costco earlier this month makes it clear that employers who want to avoid labor disputes would be well served to schedule a sit-down with their legal counsel and take a close look at their existing social media use policies. What prompts this…
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Think It’s OK to Ask for Employees’ Facebook Logins? Think Again
Proponents of free speech say no employer should have the right to ask job applicants or employees for their private social utility passwords, any more than they have the right to ask to inspect personal diaries or someone’s bathroom medicine cabinet. Such demands by employers could set a precedent for personal and online privacy, a…
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The 10 Ds of Creating a Social Media Use Policy
There’s been no shortage of news these days about companies getting in trouble because of what they or a third-party marketers have done when taking to the socially-powered airwaves. A common theme among those who find themselves caught in the crosshairs of the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Trade Commission or even a company’s…
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How to Protect Your Business from a Rogue Employee
Days before Christmas, a New York glass installer who admitted he uploaded an unfinished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the Internet, received a one-year sentence in federal prison from a U.S. District Court judge who termed his actions “extremely serious.” It’s a sad story for Gilbert Sanchez, the glass installer, but what, you ask,…
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Lawmakers Seek FTC Scrutiny of Google’s Search Results
Two U.S. senators fired off a letter to the Federal Trade Commission this week calling for an investigation into what they allege as bias by Google in favor of its own products and services in search results. Senators Herb Kohl (D., Wis.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah), both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee…
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What Your Business Can Learn From Apple’s Battle with Samsung
If you haven’t been paying attention to the ongoing court battle between Apple and Samsung, you’re missing an epic conflict over patents and trademarks, both of which are often overlooked by entrepreneurs when attempting to launch a new product or service. The dispute centers on Apple’s claims that Samsung’s products infringe upon its design patents.…
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Employees’ Facebook Pages Are Private, Until They’re Not
Even businesses that have an air-tight social media policy can run afoul of the law when employees post on Facebook and other social media platforms. Last week, an appeals court in New York determined that there are limits to how much proof of employee shenanigans a business can legally gather from social media utilities such as…
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Employees’ Facebook Posts Give Businesses Heartburn
Ever since social networking took root in U.S. offices, disgruntled employees have lodged more than 100 complaints with the National Labor Relations Board claiming their bosses have stifled their online freedom of expression. What was once contained to gossip and gripes around the office water cooler has evolved into punitive postings by employees on their…
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Labor Ruling Is a Reminder to Revisit Social Media Policies
Providing guidelines on how employees should refer to work on social media sites is smart. But firing staffers for what they post about your company is a big no-no. Employees who openly participate in a Facebook conversation about the terms and conditions of their employment — including defending their job performance — are protected under…
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How To Smooth a Rejected Job Applicant’s Feathers
To follow-up on my recent article about do’s and don’ts of using social media to screen new hires, when your company uses social media channels to both source and screen new talent, you must consider that your applicants can turn right around and use those same channels to your disadvantage. In other words, if you…
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Do’s and Don’ts of Using Social Media to Screen New Hires
Using social media to find new employees is one thing, but making a prospect fork over their Facebook credentials as part of a background check is something else entirely. More than one half of employers use social media sites to recruit potential candidates, up from just over a third in 2008, according to a June…
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FTC Takes Aim at ‘Fake News’ Websites
From snake oil to sea monkeys, selling fraudulent — or at least disappointing — goods can return a quick buck, but the risks are often high. The Federal Trade Commission recently asked the federal courts to put a temporary halt to the tactics of 10 companies using what appeared to be bona fide “news sites”…
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Settlement Reached in Employee Firing Over Facebook Commentary
There’s been a settlement in the case of an ambulance service employee who was fired last year for posting some pretty caustic comments about her supervisor on her Facebook page (read Can Complaining About Your Boss on Facebook Get You Fired?). The regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Hartford, Conn., announced…
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Can Complaining About Your Boss on Facebook Get You Fired?
Here’s a question for the water cooler crowd: Can complaining about your supervisor on Facebook get you fired? Can a status update change the status of your employment? I’ve opined in the past about the dangers and drama of authoring and then posting job-related commentary on Facebook or other socially engaging online properties (see Pitfalls…
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Tips for Creating Website Terms and Conditions
On a scale of one to 10 — with 10 being excruciatingly boring — I’d rank website terms and conditions of use agreements as maybe a twenty. Dry as dust. The only thing less spellbinding than T&Cs might be the privacy policies that often accompany such gray type. Why do companies insist on including them…
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Social Media and Your Company’s Acceptable Use Policy
Acceptable use policies have the intent of providing a safe working environment, increasing employee productivity and providing a layer of security to company assets like individual computers and network infrastructure. Thinking back on my first office job, I recall my supervisor going to great lengths to explain to me that the company phone was for…
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Free Legal Advice for Tech Startups
Entrepreneurs face many legal challenges when starting a business. From writing a business plan, to determining which corporate structure is best and scraping together enough money to file the appropriate documents, starting a business is easier said than done.With attorneys charging as much $750/hr. to set up a business, and online legal documentation services like…
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What To Do If Your Company’s Blog Is Subpoenaed
Earlier this year, the Cleveland Plain Dealer disclosed that a local judge — or somebody using her e-mail account — had been using the newspaper’s comment section to opine on several of the judge’s cases. The judge filed a $50-million invasion of privacy suit, claiming the newspaper violated the site’s terms of service. The suit…
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Protect Yourself: Social Media and Legal Liability
Business blogging and other forms of business-related social media seem to be innocent enough, but the content you post could get you into serious legal trouble. Chicago attorney and media law expert Damon Dunn, of Funkhouser Vegosen Liebman & Dunn Ltd., cautions any company that publishes content on the internet to vet that content, particularly…
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Avoid being held hostage by your Web designer
Recently, I received an e-mail message from a reader of my Entrepreneur magazine column inquiring whether I could help her company gain access to source code that a third-party programmer had created on their behalf and is being used to run certain areas of her company’s website. Her company had hired a Web design and…