Category Archives: Law: Internet Law

From the skimpy facts this sounds like (1) some Twitter user posted something pretending to be Tony La Russa; (2) Tony La Russa sued Twitter; (3) Section 230 of the CDA will block the defamation (but not the IP) claims. That said, it's a little hard to imagine how a trademark claim would work here — where's the likelihood of confusion? — but again without seeing the offending text it's hard to say much. For example, it might be a suit against Twitter and John Doe, in order to get Doe's identity, and the TM claim is there to avoid jurisdictional issues.

La Russa sues Twitter over false page: Cards manager says reputation damaged by fake 'Tweets'

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa filed suit against the social networking internet site Twitter.com last month, claiming that a page on the site that falsely used his name caused him to suffer “significant emotional distress [and] damage to reputation,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday.

La Russa is suing for trademark infringement, trademark dilution and misappropriation of name and likeness.

The website removed the false page shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the paper reported, and La Russa said Wednesday he thought the “issue was done.” He declined to elaborate.

The lawsuit includes a screenshot of the page and several “Tweets” associated with La Russa's name, two of which include distasteful references to Darryl Kile and Josh Hancock, Cardinals pitchers who died in 2002 and 2007.

If this is a John Doe case, does that make it the first against Twitter? Will the court apply the Dendrite test? I think it should.

I've posted a second entry to the Concurring Opinions symposium, What is To Be Done?”.

I doubt it will be as controversial as my first entry, but we'll see.

Washington Post in Microsoft Executive Tapped For Top DHS Cyber Post reports that Team Obama has tapped Phil Reitinger, currently “chief trustworthy infrastructure strategist” at Microsoft, to be Deputy Undersecretary of DHS's National Protections Program division.

I've watched Phil in action since his days at DoJ, and agree with Stewart Baker that he's great for the job and “we should be glad he was willing to take on the responsibility”.

In Thomson Reuters: The Gang That Couldn't Sue Straight, James Grimmelmann does a takedown on the (seemingly) asinine Thompson Reuters complaint against GMU (!) about a faculty member's distribution of (widely available) free open source firefox plugin Zotero.

(I'm partial to the less powerful but very useful Scrapbook myself, but that's mostly habit.)

That said, it does seem to me that there is one interesting and potentially triable (i.e. not utterly out-to-lunch) issue in the case, and that is the extent to which a contract by a firm with a (state) university can bind its professors. Let's say that the contract at issue does prohibit GMU from distributing software like Zotero (not obvious it does, but bear with me). Does that prohibition bind the GMU faculty? I'm not sure; but to the extent the acts were within the scope of employment, it might. But of course it doesn't bind either James or me, since we're not parties.

And, as James points out, even if it does there's the little question of what sort of damages would be owing. Since the claim is contractual, there's no scope for tort damages, just contract damages, and it's hard to see how those would be measurable here — in which case the courts would usually count them as zero.