For today’s companies, everyone is a potential critic. From online review sites to YouTube to the blogosphere, there is plenty of opportunity for people with an ax to grind, or perhaps just a lot of time on their hands, to hold forth on the perceived problems with a company or its goods and services. Whether the talk is fact-based or completely unfounded, it can be tempting for companies to try and silence critics.
However, according to Gregory Herbert, shareholder at Greenberg Traurig and an expert in intellectual property and First Amendment and media law, businesses and their attorneys need to see legal action as more of a last resort than a first response to online critics. “It’s human nature,” he told CorpCounsel.com, “If someone starts saying things about you on the Internet, you want to fight back.” Initiating a lawsuit against an online antagonist though, can get messy.
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