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Tech Site Sues Ex-Employee, Claiming Rights To His Twitter Account
nonprofiteer writes "Noah Kravitz worked as a mobile phone reviewer for a tech website called Phonedog for four and a half years. While there, he started a Twitter account (of his own volition) with the handle @PhoneDog_Noah to tweet his stories and videos for the site as well as personal stuff about sports, food, music, etc. When he left Phonedog, he had approximately 17,000 followers and changed his Twitter handle to @noahkravitz. This summer, Phonedog started barking that it wanted the Twitter account back, and sued Kravitz, valuing the account at $340,000 (!), or $2.50 per follower per month. Kravitz claims the Twitter account was his own property. A California judge ruled that the case can proceed and theoretically go to trial. Meanwhile, Kravitz continues to tweet."
He created the Twitter account as part of his job, so it does belong the company. Valuing those followers at $2.50 really isn't much either, and I can easily see that such group of targeted followers is worth that (I work in advertising too).
This seems like a really straight-forward case. The Twitter account belongs to Phonedog.
just go make the twitter handle on a new account and give them the password...
it seems pretty open and shut that it's the company's.
Of course I only read the summary.
Don't ever mix personal and employer projects, ever.
Especially don't use your employer's name or trademarks in your personal projects.
Hell in some states, depending on your terms of employment, even your personal projects can be seized by the company.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
If they win, it may damage their Twitter reputation more than just leaving it alone.
17,000 followers can spam a Twitter account pretty heavily.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
he created the Twitter account ON HIS OWN and used it for his job. The same thing should happen here that happens when I bring in a chair or a computer to assist in my work: you fire me, I take my stuff home with me. Tough cookies for the company.
Thanks for that irrelevant insight. The question at hand is who owns the property rights.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
All he needs to do is create a new account and tweet about the issue. "I am moving to a new twitter handle nsert new handle here so please update accordingly if you would like to follow me after this handle is returned to Phonedog" Problem solved
This is clearly a personal account, that of his own volition he named and populated in a way that benefited the company he worked for. No good deed goes unpunished (or unjudged based on the current comments here). There is no reason a company should be able to claim ownership of a personal social networking account because the owner freely chose to promote said company's work and brand. Suing a former employee for such a ridiculous amount of money for not handing over his personal account is at best a wasted opportunity. Why not ask him to occasionally tweet about their site, especially if he left the company on good terms? Now they will get bad publicity under a public eye that has been increasingly critical of corporations acting like bullies - and deservedly so.
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Simple, pay the guy the 340 thousand it is worth
How about he create a new handle for his personal feed and tell all of his followers to subscribe to it and to unsubscribe from the old one. If the followers care about him, they'll switch over and unfollow the old handle. If they care mostly about his professional identity then they'll stick to the old account.
If they told him to tweet, it's a work for hire. It belongs to the company. If he tweeted without permission and got away with it, it's his boss's fault for not keeping track of what his employee was doing. In that case, he should be able to keep it. In general what you do on company time with company resources belongs to the company. If you don't get things specified otherwise in writing, you should assume things done under those circumstances are work-for-hire. Of course his *name* is his. I see this as being similar to a radio show. Old Howard Stern tapes belong to whatever station he worked for. The "Howard Stern Show" belongs to Howard Stern. I wouuld have created a new account and made my last tweet on the old account a link to the new one.
If the company has a contract stating that the account is theirs, then it is. If they don't then on what grounds are they claiming it?
..which is exactly what he should have done as soon as this became an issue. I agree. If all 17,000 followers moved with him, the old account was obviously worthless. If not, then PhoneDog kept only those followers who wanted to stay anyway... FORK.
Let the case proceed, start moving his "followers" to another account (PhonePhrog or something), and then when he's got them moved, give them the twitter account.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
They have the right to the handle with PhoneDog in it. Let them have it. But he doesn't use that handle any more; they don't have a right to his personal account.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Though I can't tell if the TechnoBuffalo gig is new, or was a side job while he was still at PhoneDog, but it looks like it was not a side job.
And Noah was once Editor-in-Chief at PhoneDog. I think they miss him. These divorces are often messy.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
“No one asked me to create the account. No one told me what to tweet there,” says Kravitz, who originally created the account because that what’s everyone in the tech world was doing.
The twitter account was a tool he used to improve his job performance, and social life, and online contacts etc. etc. etc. It seems pretty clear that it was his personal initiative behind the founding of the account. That does NOT mean that because the company realized after he created and utlitized the account that they get to take it away from him.
Say Noah was a cyclist, but decided after getting the job at Phonedog to go buy a Van, which, over the course of four plus years he customized (and decorated) to make it more effective and efficient for his job. If it really did aid his "job performance", would Phonedog then sue him to take his personal van too???
I am really sick of large corporations and their lawyers trying to assign a numeric value to intangible digital content for the purposes of litigation.
Essentially they are implying that this person has stolen $340,000 dollars from them, when in fact he has created that of his own volition.
If they really want it that bad, they should be paying him the $340,000 for the account.
Watch how low that number plummets when they are faced with paying it versus trying to extract it from a single ex-employee.
This is a shameless misuse of the legal system so that a large corporation can bully a single person and steal his lunch money.
This quite simply is f***ing disgusting.
This is his personal site. He wasn't paid to produce it, he wasn't subsidized by his employer, he wasn't told to do this as part of his job or that the company expected it to be turned over to them when he left. This is just more Corporate grabbing and lawyers marking territory by pissing on past and present employees.
He changed the feed handle to his name, The company has every right to start a new "@PhoneDog" if they like. If they continue to press, do the following.
Better yet;
1. Create a completely new Twitter feed call @ThisIsMyFeedAhole,
2. Explain to his following it has nothing to do with PhoneDog and everything to do with him and him alone,
3. Explain what a noxious excuse for human excrement his ex-employer is,
4. Request that all followers move from the current blog to the new one,
4. Explain as much to his ex-employer,
5. Change the original feed back to @PhoneDog and let the the corpos have it (sans subscribers), since they'll all have moved to the new feed,
6. Later if he wants, he can change @ThisIsMyFeedAhole into his name,
7. Thank his loyal followers for keeping the faith and raise a middle finger to the corporate pigs.
Don't get angry, don't get upset, have fun, get creative. Create a new feed @FonDawgShyt or @PhoneNeuter or even @FonHomET. Twitter is the perfect place to shine a billion watt Klieg Lamp on a flaming rectal pore. If you can't shame them, perhaps you'll embarrass them into sulking away and shutting up. Use parody, don't say anything bad about them yourself, let your followers know that you'd love to describe them as swirly mounds in earthy tones, but your hands are legally tied, but if other want to give voice to their opinions you can't stop them. In short, make them sorry for being asses, and make the cost of sin really high.
Simple solution.. .
PhoneDog creates twitter account...
Noah tweets... #FF @PhoneDog
Done and Done.
I'd say there's a lot of upper management from PhoneDog posting ITT.
Seriously though, the company did not create the account: The employee did. As long as he's not trying to slander, libel or defame Phonedog, they don't really have a case. If you think I'm somehow making this up, go back and look at court case documents involving this kind of stuff. Asking for a password to something that no longer reflects the company, or was never created by the company in first place is laughable, and at best, shaky grounds for litigation. While I'm not a lawyer, common sense seems to dictate that Phonedog is painting itself into a corner.
I used to watch Noah's video reviews when he was at Phonedog. I watched a couple of the site's reviews after he left, but gave up on the site because the guy who replaced him (no idea if it's the sites owner or not) was so INCREDIBLY irritating. I didn't follow Noah on twitter but, if I had done, it would have been because I like his style. Had he handed the twitter keys back to Phonedog when he left I'm pretty sure I would have detected the change and unfollowed just like I stopped watching the reviews. I can't help thinking that some, perhaps a sizable proportion, of the actual 17,000 followers would have done the same (by the by, that seems like an awfully small number to be getting all legal about).
There was a similar case (not in the legal sense) in the UK this summer when Laura Kuenssberg, a political journalist who had been working for the BBC, moved to a competing TV channel. First I knew about it was when she started showing up in my feed as @ITVLauraK instead of @BBCLauraK. That was fine by me, but not everyone agrees: http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/07/25/how-the-bbc-lost-60000-twitter-followers
I wonder if there will be a corollary to the Streisand Effect. Wherein a corporate attempts to co-opt social Intellectual Property created by an individual, will cost a company far more than they hoped to profit from the original social IP itself?
Social media is a different beast, and those who fail to consider the ramifications of their actions may be bitten.
I wouldn't be too worried either way. If he wins, he wins. If it looks like he's losing because he did it on company time, I'd argue that I should be paid for all the tweeting I did on the time I was not using company property or on the clock. I bet that $2.50/follower might just pale in comparison to the hours he could argue he spent "head-hunting those potential clients".
It's all business.
Doesn't twitter own the account in the end? This would be like suing a dating site because you want them to offer service to Antarctica.
Does your company own your account?
Lo and behold, for I am a sig!
He removed the company name from the text, and it was an account he created in his own time. If this goes through, then every car salesmen who uses his own car will have a risk of losing it if he leaves the company.
"Is that a -brandofcar-?"
"Yes, best car I've ever owned."
Would be enough for a company to seize his car. This would pretty much force every employee to not talk about their products except when at work. Let's look at that scenario again,
"Is that a -brandofcar-?"
Now, he can't bad mouth it, or he'll be fired. He can't speak positively about it, because the company could seize his car if he ever leaves, so what is there left to say?, aside maybe from avoidance, obfuscations, running away, and attempts to change the subject, and downright shooting the person. He could try removing the all of the brand and car name and insignia around the car, but there's still a risk of someone recognizing it.
Worse, I don't think the company realizes it's the followers are there because of the employee; is they change who is doing the tweeting, then a lot of them will just jump ship. This sounds like a horrendous lose/lose for everyone.
it really all depends on the paperwork he filled out as part of his employment. at my current job, i have signed various non-compete contracts and other documents stating that anything that i create or invent while on the job that increases job efficiency or revenue for the company, or is beneficial to the company in any way, is property of the company.
... related to your job. For example he doesn't own the skills you gain working for him. Nor does he own the personal relationships you develop with customers. He might in some jurisdictions be able to contractually restrict what you do with those things after you part ways, but if he doesn't think to do that in advance he's out of luck.
Now let's look at the company's actual claims. They're claiming the guy's follower list and password are trade secrets.
OK, so how about the follower list? Of course if you work for a consultancy, you can't walk of with the entire database of clients. That *is* a trade secret. But this guy's Twitter follower list isn't a secret at all, anyone can look it up, even if you aren't Twitter subscriber. Furthermore that list has never been under the control of the company. So the follower list can't possibly be the company's trade secret because it's not even a secret in the first place. And it can't be *theirs* because it was never under their control.
As for the password to the account, that has never been in the possession of the company either, therefore while it may be a secret, it's hard to see how it is *their* secret. You could argue that the guy was working for the company when he dreamed up the password, and so it was in possession of a company employee (him). That's a stretch, but he could just change the password on the account and give them the old password. That wouldn't satisfy the company because they really don't give a damn about the password. They're after something else that isn't control of secret information. They're trying to control *public* information and so gain control over the fan relationships this guy developed while in their employ. The IP claim is just bogus.
I do think the company might have some legitimate claims to certain things here. I think they might have at least a moral claim they own posts this guy wrote when he was being paid. They probably have a right to his old handle, which he no longer uses. But that's not what they want. They want the relationship this guy has with his subscribers.
It sounds like the company parted ways with this guy, not realizing they were parting ways with his fan base too. Now they're trying to undo the damage that could have been avoided by keeping him on or making advance arrangements (like insisting he use an account that they control) instead of being loosey-goosey. It's too bad for them they didn't think ahead, but that's no excuse for using the threat of legal action to secure de facto control over something they have no right to. That's theft by legal extortion.
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Twitter clearly indicates in their ToS that the service can only be used if you can enter a binding contractual relationship with Twitter.
Unless the company gave him the ability to enter a contract with Twitter on the company's behalf, then the account is either in violation of the ToS, or it is personal.
Twitter gives the company various options for dealing with an account that infringes their marks.
Know nothing about the company I've honestly never heard of them ever but reading this story makes me dislike them. Ironicly I do recognise Noah from revision 3 podcasts so I think it's much more likely him being followed than phonedog. May well be a case of him being bigger than the company and pure jealousy, in my opinion it's very likely the followers will all leave on mass if they do get the account.
What one man can make, that man can also utterly destroy. You want to anger an ex employee that holds 17,000 users that know your company's name? One post in this 99% atmosphere, and it'll spread like wildfire and drag this company's name through the mud for.. at least a week. and then again with every post they make on it afterward.
Does that make a difference :D
Anyone care to speculate whether Rob Malda has been offered a job and whether he would continue using the CmdrTaco handle? Is the posting of this story an across-the-bow shot from Geeknet to subtly remind him not to do so, as the "value" of that handle was built up over 15 years at Slashdot?
And on a completely different subject, can someone recommend a better brand of aluminum foil? Reynold's makes my scalp itch.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I agree 100% with you.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
When I first read this, I was sure that this was an invasion of his personal space, but, after reading some of the posts, I think it probably was something that was mostly work related and which was done on work time. Even if he created it at home, he probably spent most of his time using it at work.
However, if I were the judge, I would say that all the phonedog tweets be turned over the company and that the company owes him for the value of his personal stuff and he owes the company for the value of the business stuff and the net is zero.
1) Set up brand new twitter account
2) Start tweeting "I'm handing over this account to my old employer. Please follow my new account instead." at regular intervals.
3) ???
4) Profit ?
Not everyone will switch, of course. But the ones who do will be the ones who actually read what he tweets.
... go fuck yourself.
If a company did this to me, I would have to consider charging them fair value for the resource based on what they claim it was worth, if I did any of it at all on my own time.
Big companies always get away with picking on the little guy. I don't care what his twitter name was. was it registered using his company email account or his personal email account? If they want it so bad, he should tweet the story of what they are doing and say that if anyone wishes to keep following him here is his new account and remove the old account, and if they wish to keep following phonedog even tho they treat people as such stick with this account of a uncaring crappy company.
Consider yourself off my list of potential employers, forever.
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What a shame.
So lemme get this straight... if it turns out the account is his... which Phonedog valued at "$340,000", if he wins, they would have to pay him $340,000 to buy it from him (since it was their company that valued it that much)... On the other hand, if it turns out that it belongs to Phonedog, then he shouldn't owe them anything, since they would own the Twitter ID anyway (theoretically, all he would lose is access to the account). BUT it would be an easy thing to create another account (now) and start getting people to prepare or migrate over his new account. There's no law (as long as there's no slander or libel or such...) in telling all his followers to leave the account... which would make it worthless... unless I'm missing something... Seems like a waste of a lawsuit to me.