Who owns that Twitter account?

Noah Kravitz built up quite a following at PhoneDog, a mobile-phone news and reviews website. By late 2010 his @PhoneDog_Noah Twitter account had amassed more than 17,000 followers. That was all well and goodâ€"until Kravitz resigned and went to work for a competitor. Kravitz took his followers with him, changing the name on his account to @noahkravitz. And that's when PhoneDog, which was unwilling to let 17,000 fans go that easily, filed a lawsuit against him. The question of who owns an employee's social networking account when it's used for work-related posts is a legal grey area, as more companies are discovering when they wind up in court trying to keep readers, business contacts and other social connections within the fold. "Social media law is a developing area," said Cary Kletter, a partner with Kletter Law Firm who represented Kravitz in the PhoneDog case. And because the legal basis for claiming ownership of social media accounts is not clear, litigation is a common course of action when disputes arise. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here