A lawsuit filed by a mobile phone company against one of its former employees could clarify the blurry lines on the use of social networking sites by employees for work.

The lawsuit, filed by PhoneDog Media in July, was against California-based writer Noah Kravitz, who used to write for the company. He used the name Phonedog_Noah in a Twitter account that has 17,000 followers.

In October 2010, Kravitz quit his job after working for PhoneDog for four years. The firm told him he could retain his Twitter account if he would post occasionally about the products of the company in its Web site, Phonedog.com.

He changed his Twitter account name to NoahKravtiz and kept his part of the deal to write about the company's products. But PhoneDog eventually filed the lawsuit against Kravitz, claiming that his Twitter followers were the company's customer lists.

Phonedog, which filed the lawsuit at the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, sought a damage of $2.50 per follower for eight months or a total bill of $340,000.

Kravitz said the lawsuit was his former employer's way of retaliating after he asked for 15 per cent of the firm's Web site gross advertising revenue. He was a vested partner and considers it his back pay for the reviews and blogs he wrote for the portal even after he had officially resigned.

Phonedog said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit to recover the costs and resources it invested into growing Kravitz's followers, fans and general brand awareness using social media.

"We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands," the company said in a statement.

Henry Cittone, a New York lawyer whose expertise is intellectual property disputes, said the legal world is waiting for the result of the case because of its impact on questions over ownership of social media accounts vis-à-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," Cittone told The New York Times.

The landmark ruling could have implications on a growing number of companies such as JetBlue and Samsung Electronics that are using Twitter to answer customer queries. In the case of Samsung, it has hired popular blogger Philip Berne to review phones, but Berne stressed he uses his personal Twitter accounts to make the posts.

Social media experts, however, pointed out that the average Twitter account is not as powerful as some companies or people believe it to be. They say social media accounts are mostly personal.

"The value of the individual user is very hard to quantify.... It's dangerous to overestimate the value of an account to an organisation and underestimate what it means to an individual," Columbia Journalism School Professor Sree Sreenisvasan told The New York Times.

RELATED STORIES