What's Yours is Yours: Facebook's Third Party Infringement/Marketing Policy
Within the last ten to twenty years, marketers have found an amazing array of digital avenues in which to promote their products or services. This includes the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Although this vast new world has created opportunities for more exposure, it has also created more regulations and rules to follow.
Marketing and Legal Departments are struggling to keep up with the ever-changing laws and regulations that are slowly catching up to the social media technologies. Although these new policies may seem like a nightmare, some social media platforms, such as Facebook, are taking proactive and defensive approaches to help marketers and companies navigate these new waters.
How Facebook Can Help Marketers
One of Facebook’s policies, third-party infringement (located under “Prohibited Content”), can actually assist a marketer not only with ad content, but also help a marketer’s company maintain its copyrighted and trademarked property. Facebook’s Third-Party Infringement policy advises that “[a]ds must not contain content that infringes upon or violates the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other personal or proprietary rights,” essentially Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property is defined as “a work or invention that is the result of creativity, such as a manuscript or a design, to which one has rights and for which one may apply for a patent, copyright, trademark, etc.” (Source: https://www.dictionary.com/)
This policy is one of the most difficult to enforce since so much copyrighted and trademarked content can be found virtually anywhere on the Internet. On the front end of promoting, a marketer must be cautious with the use of pictures, slogans, or even symbols that either were trademarked or copyrighted or even those that were only recently protected. Such use can result in lost time if a marketer devotes numerous hours to a campaign using unknown protected content only to have it rejected due to infringement.
How to Ensure Your Content is Safe
As noted, Facebook takes a proactive stance prior to any ads going live, including a thorough review of ads for content, images, text, targeting, etc. Facebook also provides answers on how to avoid infringement. For instance, the response to the question, “How can I make sure the content I post to Facebook doesn't violate copyright law?” was: “The best way to help make sure that what you post to Facebook doesn’t violate copyright law is to only post content that you’ve created yourself. It's possible to infringe someone else's copyright when you post their content on Facebook, even if you:
Bought or downloaded the content…
Recorded the content onto your own recording device...
Gave credit to the copyright owner…
Included a disclaimer that you didn’t intend to infringe copyright.
Didn’t intend to profit from it.
Modified the work or added your own original material to it.
Found the content available on the internet.
Saw that others posted the same content as well.
Said that the use is a fair use.”
(See: https://www.facebook.com/help/1020633957973118?helpref=about_content)
Someone Infringed on my Copyright. What do I do now?
On the defensive side, companies can report violations directly to Facebook and obtain assistance to remove the infringement. (See: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/634636770043106) Facebook also provides an interface that allows companies to search text, ads, etc. for possible infringements and thereafter report the violations directly to Facebook. This tool assists companies in zeroing in on violators quickly and efficiently. To obtain a Facebook commerce & Ads IP Tool Application, visit: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/423912757973851
Although copyright and trademark laws are still catching up with all of the new digital outlets and not all U.S.-based regulations and laws can protect intellectual property in all aspects, companies and marketers need to be hands on to avoid rampant infringement of their property. While it appears that Facebook is trying to stay ahead of any potential problems, a company must be diligent in its enforcement of its rights.
To see a full listing of Facebook’s Advertising Policies, please visit the following link: https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/