There was a time not so long ago when intellectual property could be misused and the owners of that property never knew it. Facebook and Twitter changed all of that.

Today, trademark misuse that could damage a brand’s reputation is still rampant, but brands have a much better chance of catching violations and stopping them before they do any harm. After all, trademark misuse doesn’t only hurt the company that owns the brand and its intellectual property assets. It also hurts consumers.

In other words, trademark misuse is a marketing and legal concern but it’s also an ethical problem. In today’s world where corporate social responsibility (CSR) holds companies accountable for protecting not only profits but also the planet and people (i.e., employees, consumers, and the communities where they do business), responding to trademark misuse rises to a new level of importance for companies.

What should a company do to not only protect its intellectual property and related profits but also to protect consumers and communities as a good corporate citizen?

(Photo credit: vonguard)

Case in Point

A recent occurrence of trademark misuse for Mojang’s highly popular Minecraft video game brand, as well as the Red Bull, Nickelodeon, and Play N Trade brands, offers a perfect example. Here is the background (making a very long story short):

An event called Meeting of the Mines for Minecraft fans was scheduled to occur in Orlando, Florida in December 2013. Tickets were sold via a website that claimed, while not affiliated with Mojang, the event was a fan-inspired event for people who couldn’t get tickets to Mojang’s annual MineCon convention. Sponsors of the Meeting of the Mines event were identified on the website as Red Bull, Nickelodeon, and Play N Trade. The event website promised a long list of activities, prizes, and more. Customers could purchase tickets to attend on one of the two days of the event at $50 each.

The December event was postponed to March 22 and 23, 2014. When those dates arrived, what was delivered was not even close to what was marketed. The March 22nd event did not happen at all. When people who purchased tickets arrived at the venue listed on the website, the venue representative said the venue was never booked for that day.

Ticketholders for both the March 22 and 23 events were allowed entrance into the event on March 23rd. However, what they found when they arrived was shockingly different from what they paid for. Also, the all-day event they paid for abruptly closed down after just a couple of hours.

Attendees were promised refunds, but those refunds have yet to come. Vendors who were hired by the event organizer to offer services during the event, including a character entertainer, face painter, and balloon artist, were originally paid with checks that bounced. A child who spent months creating a costume in an effort to win the $1,000 costume contest prize was paid (after days of pursuit by the child’s parent) with a check that the event organizer later put a stop payment on. Prizes marketed as game systems were replaced with boxes of generic ballpoint pens.

The vast majority of the 1,000+ tickets sold to the event were purchased by parents with children who are avid fans of Minecraft. Angry after seeing so many children extremely disappointed, attendees started a Meeting of the Mines Scam Facebook Group claiming the event was a scam. After several days of investigation, the evidence available to date certainly points to the fact that this was a scam.

A second Meeting of the Mines event was scheduled for the weekend of March 29 and 30, but the venue listed on the event website reported that its facilities had never been booked for the event. Angry ticketholders in New York have joined the Orlando ticketholders, and the story has been covered in both Orlando news and New York news reports. The strong community of Minecraft users has also joined the online conversation about the event with some of the most popular Minecraft YouTube Channels covering the story.

And where were the brands during all of these events? To Mojang’s credit, one of its representatives joined the conversation in the Facebook Group shortly after it was created, and the founder of Minecraft, Markus Persson (known as Notch), weighed in with a Twitter post saying, “I’m incredibly sad about the scammy Minecraft convention, and we’re taking it very seriously. If you got affected by it, I’m truly sorry.” Play N Trade also joined the conversation in the Facebook Group shortly after it was created and in response, its Orlando franchise offered to host a local Minecraft event in the near future.

What Brands Should Do

What should you do if your brand assets are misused in a similar way as the brands linked to the Meeting of the Mines event were? Social media allows conversations about your brand to spread faster and wider than ever. Are you prepared to respond? Do you have a brand reputation disaster recovery plan in place?