Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
cybersquatting, lawsuits, misappropriation, tony la russa, trademark

Companies:
twitter



Tony La Russa Twitter Lawsuit Ended For Real

from the let's-try-this-again dept

Last month, we noted that baseball manager Tony La Russa had sued Twitter over an obviously fake profile pretending to be him (the profile bio even said it was fake). Even if there was any sort of claim here, it would be against the person who created the account, not Twitter itself. Oddly, a few days later, La Russa announced that Twitter had settled the case, and was donating money to La Russa's charity. That seemed like it would set a bad precedent in that it would just give others incentive to sue Twitter. Except... it turned out it wasn't true. Even though La Russa said it happened, Twitter said there was no truth at all to the settlement or the charitable donation (quick question: would that make La Russa guilty of defamation?)

However, as Michael Scott alerts us, the lawsuit has now ended for real, with La Russa dismissing the charges after a "settlement" was reached, with no money exchanging hands either way. Hopefully, others quickly realize that suing Twitter for the actions of its users is a dead end, but I get the feeling this is not the last of these sorts of lawsuits.

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