On Tuesday morning, fresh (perhaps not the word) from the Caledonian Sleeper, I headed to the offices of lawyer Pinsent Masons for a very interesting breakfast seminar called “Legal risks of Web 2.0 for your business” organised by their IT arm OUT-LAW.

It was absolutely packed – their most popular seminar so far, I was told – and covered potential legal pitfalls of modern web activity, including defamation, employment law and copyright infringement in the areas of blogging, wikis, message boards, and sites like YouTube. Several recent examples from the blogging world were cited, including Inigo Wilson’s Lefty Lexicon, the doocing of Petite Anglaise and Joe Gordon, and the Mumsnet/Gina Ford case. One of the interesting facts I learned was that using a competitors’ trademark as a tag to draw attention to content (for example, if Pepsi posted an ad to YouTube tagged with “coca-cola”) can be considered trademark infringement.

If you’re interested in IT legal issues, I’d recommend these free breakfast seminars, which run across the UK (the next are in the spring). You can also read OUT-LAW magazine on the website.