The following article was first published by our colleague Michael Schmidt on his blog, Social Media Employment Law Blog. It is part of our continuing effort to keep Cyberinquirer readers on top of decisions relevant to Social Media in the context of
litigation. Thanks for the reprint, Mike.
What would you do if your employee continued to use your company’s Twitter account after he stopped working for you?
What if your (former) employee claimed that he, not your company, actually owned the rights to the Twitter followers?
Ever thought about it?
I have posted several times about how social media has not created new causes of action, but rather has provided a new application for traditional claims. One of the areas that I surmised would develop in time was the interplay between social media and post-employment competition and trade secret rights. According to two new decisions, that time has apparently come.
In PhoneDog v. Kravitz (Northern District of California), the company gave its employee (Kravitz) use of a Twitter account as part of his employment. Kravitz tweeted information to promote the company’s services, and generated approximately 17,000 followers. Kravitz left the company, and, while he changed the account “handle”, he continued to use the same account to tweet to the same followers. PhoneDog sued Kravitz for continuing to use the Twitter account, claiming that the “compilation of subscribers and the password used to access the account” constituted company trade secrets. Valuing each of the 17,000 followers at $2.50, the company sought damages of $340,000 for “stealing” each of those followers for 8 months.
