UK High Court Allows Injunction To Be Delivered Via Twitter

from the you've-been-tweetserved? dept

Thu, Oct 1st 2009 6:34pm — Mike Masnick

Last year, we wrote about how a judge in Australia allowed someone to "serve" documents in a legal dispute via Facebook, after other methods proved unworkable. Now, over in the UK, the High Court has allowed an injunction against a Twitter user to be delivered via Twitter itself. It's the typical story. Someone set up a fake Twitter account, and the real person wants it shut down. Of course, Twitter has a process for handling such things, and you'd think they'd just do that -- but apparently the guy was upset that it was a "potentially lengthy process." Yes, how dare Twitter actually make sure it wasn't violating its own users' rights first. Of course, given that the Twitter user is anonymous, it makes you wonder if he or she will even care (or notice).

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Filed Under: legal notice, uk
Companies: twitter

6 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2009 @ 7:08pm

I am confused. I thought that people here were generally against making service providers get in the middle of matters such as this. Rather than get Twitter all wrapped up, an individual is instead serving a document using Twitter as the delivery medium.
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Saragon, 1 Oct 2009 @ 7:31pm

I believe the point....
...is that rather than going through the process that Twitter already has in place for handling impersonation complaints on Twitter (which has a certain amount of verification built in), this guy went to court to do the same thing, spending much more on legal fees in the process.
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max.elliott, 1 Oct 2009 @ 9:46pm

Hang on....
A UK injunction via a US company against an unknown twit somewhere in the world?

And Blaney thinks this will matter... why exactly? The UK courts cannot force Twitter to do _anything_ and how are they going to punish someone they can't ID?
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2009 @ 5:17am

Can they do that in 140 characters?
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- John Doe, 2 Oct 2009 @ 6:54am
  
  Re:
  Yes, they can do it in 4 letters. STOP
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Matt (profile), 2 Oct 2009 @ 5:00pm

How did he get an injunction? I like that it is being served via Twitter, and agree with the concept that the court should not be uptight about methods of service, but this is an injunction that should never have been granted.

He is arguing breach of copyright. In 140 characters? What the hell did he copyright, his name? At most this is a trademark infringement, and you don't need an injunction to cure that (instead, you just keep racking up damages).
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