US based company sues employee over alleged matter of Tweeting

Twitter, a Social network tool, seems insignificant in economic terms, as one can send a very little data through a tweet (public message of 140 characters).

But in a world where the influence of social media can prove out to be the difference, the accounts of social networking companies take greater relevance. The question is: can a company give economic value to tweet and claim ownership
of an account in an employee? So what does it mean for workers who are increasingly having access to Twitter, Facebook and Google during working hours?

PhoneDog, a popular mobile website, filed a case against Noah Kravitz from Oakland (California) after knowing that their former employee still using the twitter account with the company name.

Lawsuit was filed after Kravitz, who worked as a product reviewer and video blogger for South Carolina-based company, started tweet under the name PhoneDog Noah and managed to get 17,000 followers.

After partying company with their formal employee, PhoneDog warned him terminate to his Twitter account from time to time. But he kept writing under his real name, with all his fans.

Eight months later, PhoneDog sued him arguing that he contained the list of Twitter clients and demanded $ 340,000 (about 260,000 Euros) to the value at $ 2.5 (1.9 Euros) per month. 

PhoneDog’s official response to the issue was a statement: “The costs and resources invested by PhoneDog Media into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered
property of PhoneDog Media.

"We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands".

The suit claims that Kravitz switched to their rival company, Techno Buffalo, and managed discredit their customers by using the social networking tool.

An intellectual property lawyer, Henry Cittone, believes the case will establish precedent in the online world as it relates to ownership of social media accounts.

"We’ve actually been waiting to see such a case as many of our clients are concerned about the ownership of social media accounts vis-à-vis their branding," Cittone said.

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Posted by Farasat Ali on Dec 28 2011. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry