Noah Kravitz is being sued for keeping the Twitter followers that he attracted while tweeting for Phonedog as @Phonedog_Noah.  When Kravitz left the company, where he worked as a blogger, he changed his user name but took 17,000 followers with him. Within a short time he had 22,000 followers.

According to a story in The Guardian yesterday, the company is now seeking damages of $370,000 – $2.50 per user, per month.

Kravitz  told the New York Times that Phonedog had permitted him to make the account personal as long as he agreed to “tweet on their behalf from time to time”.

However, eight months after Kravitz had left the company, it filed a lawsuit claiming that the account’s followers were a customer list, and that it had invested “substantial” resources into building it. Phonedog Media claim that the list of followers is the property of the company.

A spokesperson for Phonedog Media said, “We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands.”

Corporate control of Twitter accounts has been a contentious subject. It is clear that  this latest case could set a precedent for future ownership tussles.

“Companies will now be developing careful ways of deciding if they want to tweet with a conjoined account,” said Barbara Cookson, an intellectual property lawyer in the UK.

She continued: “For ordinary businesses it’s quite difficult to gain a following without a strong personality. You have to have a very strong brand for it to work.”

Ms Cookson argued it is hard to pinpoint a financial value to Twitter followers as it is not clear why they follow a particular account.

The issue is whether a Twitter follower mailing list is equivalent to a mailing list.  In the Phonedog case, if the company had been using it to run offers it could be seen as a mailing list with consequent value.

Intellectual property solicitor Leigh Ellis said Phonedog are likely to have a strong case as the original account featured the company’s name.Speaking to the BBC Mr Ellis said, “Let me put it this way, I’d prefer to be on Phonedog’s side.

“If you’re a follower, who are you following? You might be following Noah, but it’s PhonedogNoah. There’s a very good argument that the reputation accrued is to the company, rather than the individual.”

Two lessons emerge from this story:

First, tweeting can be a powerful tool in the quest for brand awareness.

Second, if you leave a company for which you’ve been blogging or tweeting  don’t assume that the corporate can become private and that you can start a new blog or Twitter account with a multitude of fans..