Conducting a sweepstakes promotion through a social media venue provides businesses with a potent marketing combination: Sweepstakes sponsors can increase engagement with their social media accounts, while increasing brand...more
Despite a very rough patch of late, Disney CEO Bob Chapek has won reappointment as top Big Mouse exec. Chapek “could remain at the helm of Disney until at least 2025” and has a lot to tackle, including a flagging stock price,...more
Many American businesses, regardless of size, realize the value of having a positive social media presence. Recent surveys and marketing research show that “social commerce” has grown steadily since the pandemic started in...more
This week’s News of Note includes a Foo Fighters VR concert, a peek inside Trickbot’s operations, an NFT makeover for Beatles memorabilia, some personal space for avatars, and more. ...more
In late October, Facebook announced that it would change its name to Meta, signaling a shift of the social media giant’s focus toward the metaverse, a virtual space where social media, gaming, augmented reality, virtual...more
The team behind cryptocurrency Litecoin is scrambling after an employee “retweeted what turned out to be an untrue announcement about a partnership with Walmart Inc,” a move that briefly sent Litecoin and other cryptos...more
Late last month, a new batch of plaintiffs filed a stockholder derivative suit against Pinterest, Inc., in Delaware Chancery Court, making similar allegations to those made in a pair of cases filed in the Northern District of...more
An interesting shareholder derivative suit was filed on November 30, 2020 in the Northern District of California against Pinterest, Inc. Pinterest, a visual discovery engine popular for collecting ideas for weddings and...more
The latest lame-duck Covid relief package proposal would trim about 150 billion dollars (and a number of key sticking points, including funds “to bolster state and local governments, and a temporary coronavirus liability...more
On November 30, 2020, shareholders in Pinterest, Inc. filed a derivative lawsuit in the Northern District of California against Pinterest and nine of its officers and directors. The shareholders are alleging breach of...more
Big win for Qualcomm this week, with a 9th Circuit panel reversing an antitrust verdict against the company that “had threatened the chip maker’s business model.” The appellate court, in flipping the district court’s ruling,...more
Pinterest has set a price range of $15 to $17 a share for its IPO roadshow today that “will value the company below its last private-market peg of $12 billion.” The company also plans to attempt “the sunset version of...more
Kraft Heinz dropped a double-whammy on investors on Thursday, announcing a $15 billion charge against its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands and revealing news of an SEC subpoena related to the company’s accounting practices....more
Markets are joining the American mid-Atlantic and East Coast in bracing for Hurricane Florence and the estimated $27 billion in damages it could bring with it....more
When it comes to the big (tech) 5, investors are cheering on their massive gains even as they nervously look around the corner for the dreaded market correction....more
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has filed suit to overturn a law that requires the popular entertainment website to remove the ages or birth dates of people in the entertainment industry upon request. Vine might not...more
Snapchat is on track to rake in an enormous amount of ad revenue by 2017. Also, there’s mounting evidence that the company is working toward developing a Google Glass-like product. We have written previously...more
Instagram now allows users to zoom in on photos in their feeds and at least 11 brands are already capitalizing on the new feature. Pinterest acquired Instapaper, a tool that allows you to cache webpages for reading at a...more
Twitter took steps to remedy its harassment problem. In addition, over the last six months, Twitter suspended 235,000 accounts that promoted terrorism....more
Instagram now allows celebrities to block trolls. The rest of us will have to continue trying to ignore Instagram trolls. While Facebook reached new highs last quarter, Twitter continued to stumble. Will adding more live...more
Michelle Wilson knows growth. As senior vice president and general counsel for Amazon from 1999-2012, she helped guide the company through 13 years of growth. She currently serves on the boards of directors for Zendesk, Okta,...more
In Pinterest Inc v Pintrips Inc (No 13-CV-04608-HSG, October 21 2015), the US District Court for the Northern District of California has held that the PINTRIPS and PIN marks used by Pintrips did not infringe or dilute...more
In a recent federal district court case in the Northern District of California (Case No. 13-cv-04608-HSG), Pintrips Inc., a website-based travel planning service, effectively pinned to the mat the trademark claims brought...more
Online sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend—Cyber Monday—have continued to increase year over year since the day was first christened “Cyber Monday” in 2004. As social media enthusiasts, we were surprised to learn...more
I AM Similar - The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) affirmed the examiner’s decision to deny three applications for “I AM” marks filed by i.am.symbolic, LLC (“Applicant”), finding that Applicant’s proposed “I AM”...more