Tony La Russa: He and Twitter settle trademark infringement suit
ST. LOUIS — Tony La Russa’s beef with the Tweets has been settled.
The St. Louis Cardinals manager said this afternoon that his lawsuit against the San Francisco-based social media site, Twitter.com, has been settled out of court. La Russa and his representative sued Twitter, Inc., in early May for trademark infringement, cybersquatting and misappropriation of name and likeness. La Russa confirmed Friday that the suit was settled. Damages would likely consist of covering legal feels and “maybe something for ARF in there,” La Russa said.
ARF is the Animal Rescue Foundation, La Russa’s charity and animal shelter.
La Russa said Gregory L. McCoy, the president of ARF’s Board of Directors and also La Russa’s family attorney, settled the suit. Paperwork was filed to that effect in San Francisco on Friday.
“The biggest misconception … was that it was about somebody using Twitter to be critical of me,” La Russa said. “I have plenty of critics. You can’t sue everybody who is criticizing you. That seemed like the perception — that I or we were upset with the criticism. No, it was the improper use of the name.”
The Cardinals’ manager’s key issue was what he called “the unauthorized use” of his name. La Russa did not say what would be done with the fake page, which carried a domain name of www.twitter.com/TonyLaRussa.
It’s likely that page will remain under ARF control for the charity’s use.
The fake page was taken out of circulation on Twitter.com when the lawsuit was filed in San Francisco in early May. Before Twitter.com scrubbed the page it included several “Tweets” — the 140-character or less updates that are the backbone of the site — that were critical of La Russa by way of direct or indirect references to Cardinals pitchers Darryl Kile and Josh Hancock, both of whom died while active.
Twitter.com has not returned several emails requesting comment over the past few days. A phone call seeking comment was not returned.
The site has become a raging fad — it’s on the cover of this week’s Time magazine for “changing the way we live.” The site allows users a chance to use microblogs to update their activities. News services have used it to break news and push readers toward their coverage. Professional athletes have also taken to the site as a way to communicate with fans. CNN and actor Ashton Kutcher had a celebrated bet on who could reach 1 million followers first on Twitter.
Twitter has a policy against impersonation, though it does not reject what it calls “parody impersonations.”
La Russa said of the donation to ARF that comes as a result of the suit: “It’s not going to be too ridiculous.”
The original coverage at The Post-Dispatch about the lawsuit can be found here:
- At Bird Land: “Tony La Russa suing Twitter for trademark infringement”.
- At StlToday.com: “St. Louis Cardinals’ manager sues Twitter”.
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31112816/
Twitter is one of the biggest wastes of time…
lol @ people tweeting this story, ironic lol
I don’t understand this lawsuit. Twitter can’t control who creates fake accounts. Their only responsibility is to remove the account when notified that it isn’t the celebrity’s. Not sure why he had to file a lawsuit when a simple takedown notice would have sufficed. If they refused to take down the account, that is a different matter, but I doubt that was the case here.
nickinstl,
As I understand it, TLR asked for it to be removed and the request was ignored, so he took the next step.
The next time I need to stop someone from using my likeness, I am going to talk to reporters. Sounds like a good plan…
“La Russa sought out ways to remove the address, even asking reporters for information on how to contact Twitter, Inc., and stop the feed of micro-blogs attached to his name, according to the suit.”
Exactly, StlSportsFan. If you can’t survive without sharing the past 5 minutes of your personal activities, I contend that you need to re-examine yourself. We are absorbed in technology to excess. Whatever happened to reaching out to others, asking how THEY are doing? I applaud Tony for holidng this fad and its users to task.
People keep saying that Twitter consists of users telling each other what they had for breakfast, or what they are doing now — but I never see such messages from the Post-Dispatch spots writers and their friends. Instead, I get a lot of interesting info about sports, etc.
I sort of take for granted that what I had for breakfast is of little interest to the readers compared to what pitch Brad Thompson is going to learn in his next bullpen session or, say, what Tony La Russa had for breakfast.
When someone other than millionaires can afford to use twitter I will get interested.
Um, point of order: I am not a millionaire. Twitter is free.
Umm DG, I believe you mean Point of Information, not Point of Order.
How self important do you need to be to tell all your friends exactly what you are doing 10 time a day? Good Job Tony, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t want someone impersonating me either, esp with the garbage they were accused of spreading.
Derrick, Twitter is as dumb as they come! I could care less what you are Twitting or Bernie or Shaq! Quite honestly it’s for losers!
How self-involved can a person be exactly? What a dufus. That was a disgusting waste of time and money. Someone is spoofing your name? Get over it you big baby.
You need to put out an update, as Twitter has denied any settlement of this lawsuit.
http://blog.twitter.com/2009/06/not-playing-ball.html