Webinar Recap! Social Media Privacy Legislation Update

We are pleased to announce the webinar "Social Media Privacy Legislation Update" is now available as a podcast and webinar recording.

In Seyfarth's eighth installment in its series of Trade Secrets Webinars, Seyfarth social media attorneys discussed their recently released Social Media Privacy Legislation Desktop Reference and addressed the relationship between trade secrets, social media, and privacy legislation.

As a conclusion to this well-received webinar, we compiled a list of brief summaries of the more significant cases that were discussed during the webinar:

In KNF&T Staffing Inc. v. Muller, Case No. 13-3676 (Mass. Super. Oct. 24, 2013) a Massachusetts court held that updating a LinkedIn account to identify one's new employer and listing generic skills does not constitute solicitation. The court did not address whether a LinkedIn post could ever violate a restrictive covenant. Outside of the employment context, the Indiana Court of Appeals in Enhanced Network Solutions Group Inc. v. Hypersonic Technologies Corp., 951 N.E.2d 265 (Ind. Ct. App. 2011) held that a nonsolicitation agreement between a company and its vendor was not violated when the vendor posted a job on LinkedIn and an employee of the company applied and was hired for the position, because the employee initiated all major steps that led to the employment. In the context of Facebook, a Massachusetts court ruled in Invidia LLC v. DiFonzo, 2012 WL 5576406 (Mass. Super. Oct. 22, 2012) that a hairstylist did not violate her nonsolicitation provision by "friending" her former employer's customers on Facebook because "one can be Facebook friends with others without soliciting those friends to change hair salons, and [plaintiff] has presented no evidence of any communications, through Facebook or otherwise, in which [defendant] has suggested to these Facebook friends that they should take their business to her chair." Similarly, in Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. v. Cahill, Case No. CIV-12-346-JHP, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19323 (E.D. Okla., Jan. 22, 2013) a former employee posted information about his new employer on his Facebook page "touting both the benefits of [its] products and his professional satisfaction with [it]" and sent general requests to his former co-employees to join Twitter. A federal court in Oklahoma denied his former employer's request for a preliminary injunction, holding that communications were neither solicitations nor impermissible conduct under the terms...