In May, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter in California after an imposter set up an account in his name on the social media network. La Russa withdrew the case a month later, but other celebrities and public figures, including Tina Fey, Christopher Walken, Condoleezza Rice and Bill Gates, have been victims of so-called “Twitterjacking.”
Tracking the situation is Bill Coats, a partner in the Palo Alto, Calif., office of White & Case. Coats, the past chairman of the American Bar Association’s Section of Science & Technology Law and its computer law division, recently published an article about the intersection of social media sites like Twitter and right-of-publicity laws, which control the commercial use of one’s identity. He talked to The National Law Journal about the prospects for lawsuits against Twitter involving the right of publicity.
