QR Codes: Legal Risks & Mitigation in Marketing Motion Pictures

Kisha Lyons, Attorney, Legal Affairs, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, USA

Increasingly, marketers use QR codes to promote, advertise and market goods. This article focuses on how QR codes are used in the marketing of motion pictures and some important legal issues that arise. The relevancy of QR codes increased substantially, since Denso Wave, a Japanese company, debuted the first QR code in 1994 . Smartphone manufacturers such as Apple integrating QR code readers into their devices’ built-in camera and contactless communication during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the QR code’s ubiquitous use in today’s society. One common legal issue marketers face when using QR codes is the collection and processing of consumer data being compliant with consumer privacy laws. Consumer data can be collected from a QR Code when that QR Code drives the device reading it to a digital environment configured to collect cookies from that device. Responsible marketers will want to maintain the security, confidentiality, availability, and integrity of personal information and do their best to ensure that such data is not compromised by a QR Code scan. Another important legal issue relates to litigation stemming from patent infringement claims based on how businesses display and/or utilize a QR code.

Kisha Lyons is an attorney who concurrently supports global theatrical distribution and motion picture rights at Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Kisha has worked for the Walt Disney Company for sixteen years. Prior to becoming an attorney, Kisha had a twenty-year marketing career that included managing cross platform marketing campaigns for Disneyland Resort, Disney Cruise Line, and other Disney brands. Prior to Disney, Kisha worked as an advertising executive buying media across digital, radio, television, print, and out-of-home. Outside of her professional career, Kisha helps underserved communities having mentored young single mothers for the Gramercy Housing Group in Los Angeles and volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. While earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology and history at UCLA, Kisha focused her coursework on raising awareness of societal injustice issues including radiation impact on Diné communities and the effects of the Cambodian humanitarian crisis. Kisha achieved her JD focused on entertainment & media law from Southwestern Law School and holds a yoga teacher certification in Kundalini studies. She is the mother of one son, and while having lived various places around the world, she is happy to call Los Angeles home.

The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that is headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California