If business owners and consumers do not understand how to protect tangible ip rights or how protection of intangible ip rights can be lost through social media posts then such business owners and consumers may suffer detrimental harm thus its critical that individuals stay up to date on changes in ip law enabling them not only to contribute to the current public debate at a deeper level . All intellectual property created for social media must be reviewed for business benefit and appropriately protected all potential forms of ip such as patents copyrights trademarks trade secrets designs etc must be identified for review and business analysis a well planned protection strategy and ip investment will go a long way in building financial and business value for ip of a . Social media ip the law nick told us that ip and social media is still a grey area when it comes to the law this is despite social media having rapidly grown in the last 10 years that its now a huge part of practically everyones daily lives with so many brands starting to use or repost user content and user generated content . Using these various social channels available present many benefits however it does not come without problems which affect intellectual property ip rights facebook transparency report released in december this report indicates for the first half of 2017 just how much ip has been affected by social media as one of the biggest user . Ip topics industries served blog contact us social media and intellectual property november 18 2015 social media and small businesses many businesses are still reluctant about using social media some of this comes from not keeping up with the various forms of social media as the technology changes quickly this makes it difficult if not impossible to have a presence in every forum