Analysis of Rights Arising from accounts of Social networks in employee and employer relations (with Emphasizing on The U.S.A law)

Abstract

Today, social networks play an important role in the development of various occupations. To this end, employers hire employees who are familiar with the field to promote their products in cyberspace by opening an account in these networks. Basically, after the termination of the employment relationship, according to the financial value of the accounts, there is a dispute over various issues, including the issue of the owner of the account. The main question is who is the owner of the account? The laws of different countries, such as Iran and the United States, are neutral on this issue which has added to the complexity of the issue. However, to solve this challenge, various approaches have been proposed by thinkers, which are: Trade secret approach, contract law, intellectual property rights and finally the right of publicity. These approaches have all been developed in the context of American law. In recent years, most cases conflict with the ownership of the account when they refer to the courts. In Iranian legal literature, this issue has been less discussed. According to the Western legal literature, In the present article an attempt is made to examine the issue of ownership of accounts in social networks in a descriptive-analytical manner. In this way, two theories of “will” and then “labor” will be introduced as tools to identify the account holder in the Iranian legal system. In order to determine the main owner of the account, the judge should examine the explicit or implicit will of the employees and employers based on these theories. In the next step, the judge can refer to the custom; and finally, it is possible to determine the owner based on the labor theory; That is, a person who has caused the prosperity of the financial value of the account. Also, if none of the methods help, the last way is to rule on the joint ownership of the disputing parties.

Keywords

• trade secret
• right of publicity
• copy-right
• digital asset
• contract law