/ Intellectual property in the digital era

Thanks to the digital era, young people are accustomed to the intellectual property rights that are present in digital platforms, which are intended to assert their merits as creatives, content creators and developers. As owners, they should try to include all the tools in their favor to guarantee their rights.

Laura Hernández Bethermyt
Associate Attorney
Alessandri Abogados

The use of social networks has had a representative boom in society and has influenced several areas. Intellectual property rights are involved in the different digital platforms and their holders must try to use all the elements in their favor to guarantee their rights. In addition, the platforms have adapted different mechanisms to enforce the legitimate interests of the holders. It is visible that “the phenomenon of online social networks is based precisely on the interactive and multinodal logic of the Internet”[1].

Platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube have been forced to modify their terms and conditions clauses to protect intellectual property rights, both for ordinary users, content creators, as well as the various holders of intellectual rights, to prevent unauthorized third parties from profiting from them. For example, uploading a video to YouTube with a song in the background without authorization from its owner may cause direct actions against the user by the platform. YouTube has a series of algorithms to detect this kind of situations and remove the content a few seconds after it becomes available. Likewise, Instagram does not allow the use of trademarks without authorization from their owners in the different publications and grants a series of advantages to the owners over complaints towards third parties for unauthorized use of trademarks.

These situations make young people familiar with intellectual property issues, which have the purpose of asserting their merits as creatives, content creators and developers in the different existing platforms. Nowadays, at the reach of a click, there are enough tools to create different products and guarantee the real compliance of third parties’ intangibles.

With the arrival and boom of these applications, new products and services have emerged in the market, such as insurance for influencers that emphasize online security and aim to protect against technological fraud, losses due to cyber-attacks and administrative sanctions; streaming rights for e-sports; licenses to brands for online content; contracts between young celebrities and relevant products, etc. All these new services always with the presence of intellectual property rights and what they protect.

[1] REVISTA PROPIEDAD INTELECTUAL. ISSN:1316-1164. MÉRIDA-VENEZUELA. YEAR X. No. 14 January-December 2011. Fariñas D., J./pp. 150-173, “El Impacto de las Redes Sociales en la Propiedad Intelectual” – Link