Former employee using our company name My wife and I have run a company for the last 6 years. Unfortunately one of our former employees opened a website using our logo, pictures, and referring to himself as if he were still our employee. So he is using our branding to direct potential customers to him. (Is this considered Phishing?) We are based in Ireland, and I contacted his hosting company, but I don't think they will block his domain/website. What should I do in this scenario?
What you are describing is not "phishing." It does, however, violate all sorts of laws against copyright and trademark infringement. Furthermore you would have compelling claims against the former employee for various torts &ndash; e.g., breach of trust. The prudent course of action in this scenario would be to contact a lawyer assess the value of your claims and consider suing the former employee for damages and injunctions. If the potential damages (and the ability to collect them) are high enough you might be able to retain a lawyer's services on contingency. At the very least you could send the former employee a "cease and desist" letter. Ideally that should be drafted by a lawyer, but there is plenty of boilerplate and samples to be found online if you lack the money to properly defend your business.
Do I need to create an LLC if I already own the domain? No. Can someone legally create an LLC with the same name as my domain? Yes. Just trying to understand what the difference is between an LLC and a business An LLC, a &quot;limited liability company,&quot; is a kind of legal entity that has a separate identity from the members of the LLC. The members' liability is limited with respect to the company's liability, hence the name. A business is a commercial activity. The two concepts are independent. A person can have a business without forming a corporation, or indeed many businesses. A single corporation can also have many businesses. Back to the question about someone forming an LLC using your domain name, this raises the issue of trademark protection. In the US, at least, you can't register a trademark unless it is &quot;in use in commerce&quot; (15 USC 1051(a)(3)(C)), which means explicitly that you cannot use the mark &quot;merely to reserve a right in&quot; it (15 USC 1127). But there are many subtleties of trademark protection that are widely misunderstood by most people, so if you anticipate wanting trademark protection for a name, you will probably want to learn about how trademark protection works and likely talk to a trademark lawyer.
What's the worst that can happen? If you do nothing, it's a bit inconvenient. If you delete all that company's stuff, who knows what they could sue you for. I'm not saying they would be right, but being sued can be expensive, no matter whether you are wrong or right. Send a letter by registered mail, with a witness to the contents, that you are the only one with admin rights to these sites, and asking them how they would like to take over these sites, and informing them that you will delete anything on your personal email after a reasonable time if you don't hear from them. And since anything you do is work for you, you should expect some appropriate compensation. Deleting their property, even if it affects you, is risky.
Such clauses are called "copyright assignment", "invention assignment", and/or "works for hire" clauses, partly depending on the clause's intent and wording. They're pretty common in employment contracts for software development and some creative positions. Frankly, the clauses don't actually do much, at least in the US -- copyright law already recognizes the concept of works made for hire (which belong to the employer), and claims too far beyond that are often rejected if they aren't obviously related to company business. With that said, your hypothetical programmer's painting is safe unless it depicts, say, the contents of an email from the CEO. :) Even if the clause technically entitles the employer to claim ownership, the employer has no legitimate interest in doing so. Likewise, that app created outside work is safe as long as it is created using no company resources and is unrelated to the employer's business. If the app is obviously related, that's where things get hairy.
You seem to have a solid understanding of the ePrivacy implications, but lack a fundamental insight: your organization does not have a right to achieve its mission or a right to disseminate unwanted marketing. But other people do have a right to not be subject to excessive marketing. Of course, reality is more complex, so it's probably not entirely impossible to do marketing. In your point 1, you note that some EU/EEA/UK countries distinguish ePrivacy protections between consumer and business subscribers. You can research the exact rules in the potential customer's country. This may allow you to email corporate/business accounts. I would strongly advise against messaging via Linkedin if there is a chance that the person is using that account for personal purposes like networking or hunting jobs, not just for conducting official company business. ePrivacy has markedly different rules for email marketing vs phone marketing. Whereas there are pretty strict rules for electronic messages and robocalls, manual cold calling can be OK from an ePrivacy perspective. However, many EU/EEA/UK countries have rules that go beyond ePrivacy, and may have a kind of do-not-call registry that you must respect. Of course manual calls take more effort than spamming emails, but recall the above point that you don't have a right to spam other people. Phone calls are probably the most appropriate approach when the company lists individuals' phone numbers on its website. This will at least give you a few seconds of attention with a real human, more than you can expect from an email that is likely to be caught by spam filters. Marketing via physical mail tends to have very lax rules. Note that every company/business that has a website will have to disclose its contact details including an address there, so this information is easy to acquire. However, chances are low that anyone would seriously engage with that marketing. You can consider alternatives to direct marketing, so that interested companies eventually come to you. Things like press releases, writing guest articles in industry publications, speaking at relevant conferences, working on search engine optimization, buying ads. On the GPDR aspects: GDPR and ePrivacy overlap, and it is necessary to comply with both sets of rules (GDPR likely applies here via Art 3(2)(a)). But where they potentially contradict each other, ePrivacy as the more specific law has precedence. For example, ePrivacy overrides the default GDPR legal basis rules when it comes to email marketing to existing customers (opt-out basis, no consent needed) or to using cookies (needs consent unless strictly necessary). Information that relates to corporations is not personal data, but information that relates to individual employees or to sole proprietors would typically be personal data. Since you are unlikely to obtain consent for using this data, you would need an alternative GDPR legal basis such as a &quot;legitimate interest&quot;. Relying on a legitimate interest requires that you conduct a balancing test, weighing your interests like marketing against the recipient's interests, rights, and freedoms. Core question in this context is whether the data subject can reasonably expect their personal data to be used like this, taking into account the nature of their relationship with you. Since there is no pre-existing relationship, claims of a legitimate interest are weak to start with. However, it may be possible to argue that when a company makes employee contact details available via its website (not LinkedIn!) then relevant marketing can be reasonably expected. I would rather not rely on such arguments, though.
I can't find any law that would prevent an employer from requiring this. Under current Florida law, an employer can even demand passwords and access to an employee's social media accounts. A bill was proposed to prohibit this, but it hasn't passed. Generally, an employer can require anything they want as a condition of employment, as long as it is not illegal. Florida has at-will employment so the employer could certainly fire the employee if they don't comply.
The standard for fair use of trademarks is as follows: (1) the product or service in question is not readily identifiable without use of the trademark (2) only so much of the mark as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service is used (3) use of the mark does not suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner. I think you might run into a problem with (1). In other words the trademark owner would argue that you could have used fake trademarks to satisfy your product description needs, so you are using their trademark unnecessarily.
That is a very broad clause, broader than the default US rule for copyright, for example. (I know the question asked about the UK, I just happen to know the US copyright rule.) It would seem on the face of it to include independent research on a subject totally unrelated to the person's employment, done off the company's premises and not during normal work hours, but while the person was an employee.. Indeed it would arguably include the copyright to a novel written off premises and during off hours. Use of "course of employment" (instead of "term") would improve the provision. so would "as a part of his or her employment" or "closely related to the subject of his or her employment". Another possible restriction would be "Using the Company's facilities and/or equipment, or during normal working hours". However, my experience is that an employer will have drafted whatever language it uses through its company lawyer, and will be quite unwilling to alter it in any way. A prospective employee will probably be faced with a take-it-or-leave-it choice unless that person is a nearly indispensable figure to the company. One could send the company a certified letter saying, "When i signed the contract agreeing to {company language} I did not intend to include any developments made off company premises, not using company equipment, and unrelated to the subject or scope of my employment. I retain full rights to any such developments." Such a letter would help establish that there was no meeting of the minds to assign such non-employment-related developments or IP to the Company. How much weight it would have if the rights to such developments were the subject of a court case I am not sure.