Love the technology, hate the potential for legal issues

Think back 10 years ago. Did you ever imagine that you would own a phone that would help you find the best price of gasoline, weather information, baseball scores or just surfing the Internet?

Or, that people would point that same phone at a little square on an advertisement and be taken to your website?

These advances in technology are great. But they also should have you thinking about managing the readily available information about you, your business and your employees.

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You need to be sure you really understand the legal implications of what you are saying about yourself and that it’s accurate.

Everyone knows that statements like, “Piggly Wiggly ketchup tastes best,” or “Cats prefer Salmon Pops” are marketing puffery and not likely to get you into trouble. But what about statements that could be taken as guarantees by someone who doesn’t know better?

One of the bigger landmines: “Money back if you’re not satisfied.”

Web designers don’t want you to clutter your page (and especially your mobile version) with all the disclaimers – returned item must be in like-new condition, with original receipt, within 10 days, for store credit only, etc.

What about what you post on social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn?

Do you make promises there that you think are not promises, but someone else might take to be guarantees.

Also, people routinely “pad” their resumes. If one of your key employees adds inaccurate qualifications to a profile on LinkedIn and someone relies on those qualifications to use your company, you may be opening yourselves to a lawsuit for fraud.

Thanks to all of this new technology, it has never been easier to find out what your competitors are doing and to gain an advantage over them.

Smart business owners visit their competitions’ websites frequently to find out what they are saying and doing. You can make changes in your own business to be more competitive.

But here’s the point: be careful not to steal copyrighted material. Of course, careful monitoring will help you find out if the competition is using your own copyrighted sales material or selling items that infringe your intellectual property rights.

If there is infringement, you can compel your rivals to stop selling the product in question, or you can sell them a license to the intellectual property and increase your value.

The benefits of a web presence as well as a presence on the multitude of social networking sites can be a boon to business, but requires active management of risks.

So much information is available that it can be overwhelming. Seemingly innocuous comments can come back to haunt a company years later. The web is permanent; old versions of websites are easily found using an archiving site like The Wayback Machine. Courts can order older versions of Facebook or other pages to be produced.

Lawsuits frequently take full advantage of statements made on social media sites. (And, there are services available to gather the information for your opponent’s use.)

Jokes, pictures, statements about employers or employees can be the basis for an employment suit. Even something as innocent-sounding as a picture of a company-sponsored Christmas party where drinks are served can trigger a personal injury suit from someone later injured by an attendee.

You can’t avoid all potential liability. But, you can frequently remind employees and marketing departments to think before they post. What may seem funny, innocuous, or cute today may not seem so if they wait a day to think about. And, of course, follow the same rules yourself.

Alan F. Blakley is a lawyer with CR MILES PC in Fort Collins. He can be reached at afblakley@crmiles.com.