Corporate Blogging Legal Considerations
January 25, 2011
This is a part of a series that was created to help you get the practice of corporate blogging built into your company. This series will walk through the process, necessary roles, in addition to guides for each role to help your company get started quickly. The following several posts make up a quick start guide for the blogging administrator.
Under copyright law, the employer generally owns blogging content generated by employees within their scope of employment. It is different when independent contractors (whether individuals or companies) create blogging content, as that is not owned by the company (though it may receive a license) unless there is a specific type of written agreement in place (talk to your attorney about this type of an agreement).
It may be worthwhile to develop a short Blogging Policy to educate employees about blogging legal considerations.
Here are some useful sites on drafting blogging policies and blogging legal issues:
Forrester Research Blogging Policy Examples
Altimeter Social Media Policies
The Lawyers Made Us Say This: These legal considerations are for informational and educational purposes, and are not legal advice. Consult your attorney for any legal advice.
For more information about blogging in general:
Who Owns Your Marketing Content?
Next week I’ll share the checklist for employee bloggers.