Facing Up to Facebook
By Henry Stimpson
Facebook’s community pages pose a challenge to companies trying to protect their brands and trademarks on the Web.
Community and so-called fan pages let Facebook users share posts about a brand or company they like. They’re often set up by people outside the company. And they’re often popular.
A trademark holder now must monitor these community pages, plus fan pages and groups – none of which it controls, unlike its official webpage, notes John Strand, a lawyer with Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C.
“The biggest issue is loss of control over your identity,” says Strand, a litigator and trademark expert with the Boston intellectual property law firm. “Someone could go on a health-food brand’s community page and say cigarettes go well with health foods – not exactly the message they want to associate with their brand.”
And consumers can easily be confused between official pages and community pages. For instance, when a user searches for Dr. Pepper using Facebook’s search bar, many “Dr. Pepper” pages pop up.
Consumers can’t tell immediately whether it’s a community page, a fan page or the company’s official page, Strand says. Lack of differentiation could easily lead to a person “liking” just the community page of a company, completely bypassing the company’s official page.
Facebook’s recent modification of the way users’ “Likes and Interests” sections on their profiles operate makes confusion more likely, he adds.
By default, Facebook links from each of a user’s “Likes and Interests” to the community page associated with the subject.
For example, if a user says she “likes” Dr. Pepper in her profile, that “like” will be linked to the Dr. Pepper community page and that person’s profile will appear in the “Like This” section of the Dr. Pepper community page.
One Possible Fix
Because Facebook launched this feature in April 2010, some of the links to “Likes” associated with brands have been changed so that they link to the brand’s official page. But many brands are still linked to community pages.
“Facebook users might think they are following the official word from their favorite brand, while instead they are merely exposed to a feed of text from, say, Wikipedia and a constant feed of posts that contain the trademark of the brand they ‘Like,’” Strand says.
A trademark owner can work with Facebook to reduce confusion. Trademark owners can contact Facebook, which has reset some links from users’ “Likes and Interests” to an official page instead of a community page.
“Users then can at least find the official page easily,” Strand says.
Taking this step should at least mitigate any possible confusion by having users’ “Likes and Interests” link to a company’s official page as opposed to a community page.
The best proactive strategy is to have a lively Facebook page that people will want to follow instead of a random community page or other fan page that others have set up.
“Without a great official page,” Strand says, “fans of your company have nowhere else to turn.”
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