Employer and Former Employee Battle over Twitter Account

Posted on January 11, 2012 by admin

The mobile phone company Phonedog.com has sued one of its former employees, Noah Kravitz, in a California federal court under the allegation that Kravitz violated trade-secrets law when he continued to use a Twitter account which included approximately 17,000 followers Kravitz amassed while working for Phonedog.

Phonedog is arguing that Kravtiz’s Twitter account qualifies as a customer list under trade-secrets law and is therefore company property. Trade-secrets law would prohibit a non-employee’s personal use of a customer list. Phonedog seeks damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months ($340,000 total). Furthermore, the company is asking the court to bar Kravitz from continued use of the account.

Many employers have encountered issues with former employees accessing work-related social media accounts and are anxiously awaiting a ruling. Legal experts believe the outcome will hinge on ascertaining the purpose for which the account was created. If the court finds that Phonedog commissioned the account to communicate with existing customers and to gain new customers, then Phonedog is more likely to prevail.

To read more about case, check out the following piece on it from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/technology/lawsuit-may-determine-who-owns-a-twitter-account.html?_r=1

SEC Moves to Protect Small Businesses

Posted on October 5, 2011 by admin

The Securities Exchange Commission recently announced the formation of the Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. The SEC established this committee for the purpose of protecting the interests of privately held small businesses and publicly traded companies with market capitalizations below $250 million.

Small business owners as well as the officers and directors of the smaller publicly traded companies will now have more say in what the SEC can do to facilitate funding for these organizations in the capital marketplace. The SEC’s primary goal with this committee will be to ensure that regulatory burdens on small business investors are not overly burdensome. The committee’s members will consist of corporate directors, officers and attorneys.

Prosecutions for FDA Violations Target Corporate Officers and Attorneys

Posted on September 19, 2011 by admin

The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog profiled a new trend in prosecutions for violations of FDA regulations that could pose serious risks for officers and attorneys in the health care sector and particularly those working in the pharmaceutical field.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is once again invoking the “responsible corporate officer doctrine” to hold executives personally and criminally liable for corporate violations of U.S. food and drug laws. This doctrine allows prosecutors to reach executives of the violating company even if those executives were unaware of the violations.

The most alarming aspect of this trend for executives is the punishment that may follow if prosecutors invoke the doctrine successfully: exclusion from future participation in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Prosecutors can even seek this penalty for misdemeanor violations, such as the misbranding of a pharmaceutical drug. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will now decide whether such punishment is lawful.

If you are a corporate officer in the heath sector and have questions concerning your business’s compliance with administrative law, DLM Legal can help. Feel free to contact us at 216.635.0002 or info@dlmlegal.com.