Noah Kravitz is being sued by a former employer over Twitter ownership.
As more and more companies latch onto the Twitter bandwagon and hire people to write on social media outlets for them, the question of ownership is going to come up. Who owns Twitter posts? Is it the company who employed the writer, or is it the writer who actually churned out the Tweets? In the case of PhoneDog Media and Noah Kravitz, the question has gone to court. That’s right, a company is suing a former employee over the rights to a popular Twitter feed.
“This will establish precedent in the online world, as it relates to ownership of social media accounts,” says Henry J. Cittone, an intellectual property lawyer in New York. “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-a-vis their branding. It all hinges on why the account was opened. If it was to communicate with PhoneDog’s customers or build up new customers or prospects, then the account was opened on behalf of PhoneDog, not Mr. Kravitz. An added complexity is that PhoneDog contends Mr. Kravitz was just a contractor in the related partnership/employment case, thus weakening their trade secrets case, unless they can show he was contracted to create the feed.”
One of the things I’ve learned since I became a freelancer is that I really have no control over my work once my employment contract has ended. I worked for a guy who worked for a company that got bought by a major media conglomerate, and my role with them was to serve as a blogger and community rallying point by fishing through content to find good videos, post them on the official blog, let the users know about the official blog, and network.
When I left, all the content stayed; all the good will and connections and whatnot I’d made went with me. I figure a Twitter feed belongs to the person who developed the feed. In this case, that’s Noah Kravitz. All PhoneDog did was lend him their handle.
Tags: lawsuits, unusual lawsuits, social networking lawsuits, microblogging lawsuit, microblogging, social networking, Twitter, Noah Kravitz, PhoneDog Media, lawsuit over who owns Twitter feed, Twitter lawsuit, company sues former Twitter feed handler, company sues blogger, intellectual property lawsuits, IP, intellectual property
