Who owns linkedin accounts

Is it the employer or the employee? LinkedIn contacts were key for our client, which was a recruitment company focused on the financial services industry.

Our client wanted its employment contractual terms and procedures to protect its business and intellectual property. These prohibited the use of confidential information belonging to the company. The terms specifically mentioned candidate and client lists. There were also restrictive covenants that prohibited soliciting candidates and clients, including prospective candidates and clients. The LinkedIn contacts raised problems. Additionally, what if an employee keeps their contact list on LinkedIn and nowhere else?

Does the employer own the LinkedIn contact list? Do they have a right to access the LinkedIn contact list? An employee can argue that they own their LinkedIn account information and the employer has no right of access to their account.

LinkedIn operates in a way that makes restrictive covenants difficult to enforce. When an employee moves to a competitor they update their LinkedIn details.

Their connections learn of this status change. Arguably, however, this is not a targeted request to do business that would amount to a breach of a normal non-solicitation clause. Employees should use a dedicated Linkedin account during their employment. And it happened because the LinkedIn profile was set up using a company email address. The implications of this ruling are ominous, yet not often discussed in social media circles.

This person, who blogs about recruitment, posed the question of who owns LinkedIn profiles to his network and the results were interesting:.

Top tip! Have taken your advise and checked my LinkedIn Profile. It is now definitely owned by me. Mary Rose thanks for sharing this example. The issue of who owns social media contacts is a hot topic at the moment. I would be interested to know what the social media policy of the firm in question says about this topic.

You pose an interesting suggestion about changing the email address — there is also the opportunity to have multiple email addresses and indicate which one is the primary email address.

In relation to the whole ownership of digital assets, I remember a fascinating debate at Reboot about 7 years ago about who owns a blog when a blogger dies? What are your thoughts? How could this happen?

Is it legal? Recent searches No recent searches. Follow Us. Who really owns your LinkedIn profile? Your browser does not support the canvas. In the good old days, one of the golden rules of marketing was to have a centralised company database that was — ideally — managed and updated by only one person. Restraint of trade enforcement on LinkedIn Having all these decentralised LinkedIn databases makes enforcing the restraint of trade agreements tricky, to say the least.

Most employees feel entitled to use their hard-earned knowledge and contacts when embarking on new ventures — and with good reason.

Personal and professional communication on LinkedIn Love it or loathe it, social media blurs the divide between personal and professional communication. Worse, still, are Farmville credits ceded to the company upon resignation? Why users should care In the United States, many lawsuits have been filed by companies seeking to maintain ownership of LinkedIn profiles — the costs of which have surely outweighed the value of the contacts.

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