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."

Comments

Re:It was part of his job

[Anonymous Coward]

Removing "Phonedog" from the name when he left indicates that he's no longer with the company.

I'm willing to bet he tweeted about that, too.

If our judges had any real legal training and common sense, they'd be telling the company to piss off and stop wasting court time.