Judge Allows Twitter Lawsuit Go Move Forward

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That bizarre lawsuit over Twitter followers is moving forward thanks to U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James. It is funny how the company claims to "own" the Twitter followers. :rolleyes:

Kravitz worked for the Mount Pleasant-based company — a website that reviews mobile devices like phones and tablets — from 2006 until 2010. PhoneDog sued him in July, saying that, when he resigned, Kravitz changed his Twitter name from PhoneDog—Noah to noahkravitz, and kept his 17,000 followers. The company said the followers should be treated like a customer list, and therefore PhoneDog's property. According to the company, Kravitz should pay $2.50 per follower per month for eight months, or a total of $340,000.
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chockomonkey said:
seriously we need to re-elect everyone who currently holds a position of power.
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With the way the internet has revolutionized the world, we need people that are aware of how things have changed over the past two decades and are staying with the times. Very few lawmakers and politicians are in that catagory.
 
this might hold water if he was on twitter for the company and it was used as a marketing tool as part of his job.
This is a normal issue in many sales based companies/positions. The customer list is the property of the company and the sales person cannot take that list with them to a competitor.

But the company approach here is a bit heavy handed and looks like a case of them just trying to leverage him out of his initial lawsuit for unpaid wages.
 
kirbster said:
this might hold water if he was on twitter for the company and it was used as a marketing tool as part of his job.
This is a normal issue in many sales based companies/positions. The customer list is the property of the company and the sales person cannot take that list with them to a competitor.

But the company approach here is a bit heavy handed and looks like a case of them just trying to leverage him out of his initial lawsuit for unpaid wages.
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You get to the heart of why I think they have a case. Was he not tweeting as a part of his job, or primarily because of and about the work he was doing? The quote in the news item made it sound that way. If so, that account is part of the public identity of the company, and he can't just change the name and walk away with the audience. Put another way, it's not really about the technology or the medium, it's about the intellectual property and the brand identity.
 
HydroBudz said:
twitter followers do not equal customers. no one "owns" them.
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You are missing the point here. It is not about "owning" customers, it is about owning customer lists. This is true for almost all sales and marketing no matter the industry. Essentially if he was using Twitter in his official capacity and generating followers for a larger customer base, he should have created an entirely new Twitter or linked everyone back to an official company Twitter rather than just change the name of that account. With that account he has influence over all those customers from the previous company and could very definitely harm the company if he so chose.

This is akin to someone leaving a trust firm for a bank and telling all those customers who he managed funds for that he was starting a private firm and asking if they would like to use his private firm to invest with. Banks take those situations very seriously. There are many laws that guard against this type of behavior.
 
Yeah, I have to say twitter followers, as stupid and easy as it is to get, does represent a list of contacts one person made while with the company. More likely than not he signed some paperwork that says something along the lines of contacts he makes (even if they contacted him via twitter) are the property of the parent company.

However I don't agree with the 2.50 per "person" per month fine they're trying to slap on him. But hey, sounds like he's unwilling to give up the names in the first place.
 
"In court documents, Kravitz said he used the Twitter account in question mostly for personal musings about sporting events and pop culture and, after leaving the company, even sent out messages at PhoneDog's behest about the company's contests and giveaways. Kravitz said he sent such messages as recently as December 2010 and that PhoneDog only objected to his use of the account after he sued the company in June for unpaid wages in an ongoing case"

So it doesn't sound like he used his account as part of his job, therefore those followers don't belong to the company.
 
snowcat said:
"In court documents, Kravitz said he used the Twitter account in question mostly for personal musings about sporting events and pop culture and, after leaving the company, even sent out messages at PhoneDog's behest about the company's contests and giveaways. Kravitz said he sent such messages as recently as December 2010 and that PhoneDog only objected to his use of the account after he sued the company in June for unpaid wages in an ongoing case"

So it doesn't sound like he used his account as part of his job, therefore those followers don't belong to the company.
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His own lawsuit might do him. He said he did announcements and sponsorship stuff, after he left, for the company on that account. If he wins and gets paid for that work, that Twitter account just became company property as it was used to promote PhoneDog.
 
BoogerBomb said:
His own lawsuit might do him. He said he did announcements and sponsorship stuff, after he left, for the company on that account. If he wins and gets paid for that work, that Twitter account just became company property as it was used to promote PhoneDog.
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Is he trying to get paid for doing the post-leaving announcements? That's the real question.
 
BoogerBomb said:
His own lawsuit might do him. He said he did announcements and sponsorship stuff, after he left, for the company on that account. If he wins and gets paid for that work, that Twitter account just became company property as it was used to promote PhoneDog.
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This. Plus, there's that pesky word "mostly" in there. Courts are not impressed by things like "mostly," "probably," "almost," "kinda," etc. Remember how lawyers in the movies and on TV are always saying things like "Did you or did you not" and "Answer yes or no"? Trying to wave away the inconvenient technicalities, like he did SOME work-related posting, or he never would have started the account if not for his job, will sink him.
 
chockomonkey said:
seriously we need to re-elect everyone who currently holds a position of power.
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What we need are officials who were born within the last 30 years.

What we have now is almost the perfect example of a technological singularity. Our current officials are living in a world that has become so rapidly advanced that they literally can't comprehend it, yet they refuse to find the integrity to admit that.
 
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