Blaney, a right wing blogger, took action last week against an
unknown individual who had been posting on the Twitter
micro-blogging site under a variant of his name.
Blaney runs a blog called Blaney's Blarney and posts updates on
Twitter under the name Donal_Blaney. An unknown person posted ten
times to Twitter under the name Blaneysblarney.
Blaney asked the High Court to grant an order telling the
unknown person to stop posting and to identify themselves. A
statement on the website of the law firm that employs Blaney said
that the activity was "breaching the copyright and intellectual
property of the blog’s owner".
That order was made and, because the person's identity was a
mystery, served on them via the Twitter service.
The action has been successful, according to Blaney's most
recent update on his blog.
"The hitherto anonymous individual who infringed my intellectual
property rights and set up the fake @blaneyblarney account on
Twitter has, on service of the injunction requiring him to stop and
to reveal his identity, agreed to comply with the order," he wrote
today. "I am in the process of negotiating a settlement with this
individual."
Litigation expert George
Lubega of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said
that the High Court's permission to serve an order via the
micro-blogging site was a sign of its pragmatic attitude.
"Courts are becoming much more realistic about these sorts of
things," he said. "The usual method of serving documents is through
the post, but court orders are served by fax, by email. I've even
served them, effectively, by reading them out over the telephone,
so it is not a million miles from that to serving it by
Twitter."
There could be a danger that it is not absolutely certain that a
person under legal attack knows about the case, though, he warned.
"A potential problem might be that the person at the wrong end of
proceedings could say that they were not aware of the order," he
said.
Lubega said, though, that many interim injunctions are in effect
awarded without the other party having a chance to defend
themselves. They are given that opportunity subsequently, he
said.
"It happens all the time that interim injunctions are served
without the other party knowing about it, but they would tend to
have a short period of operation and the person would then have a
chance to return to court to argue their case," he said.
Blaney said on his blog that he was running a poll to help him
decide to which charity damages paid by the impersonator should be
donated.
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