Any other developer being sued by Twitter today?
If so give me a call – feel free to tweet out www.MyTwitterButler.com/I’m_Being_Sued to anyone you want – looking forward to the press having a field day with this.
Regards,
Dean Collins
de...@MyTwitterButler.com
+1-212-203-4357 New York
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001 (London in-dial).
From: Dean Collins
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009
10:37 PM
To: 'newt...@meetup.com'
Subject: Twitter is Suing me!!!
So not only are Twitter fighting battles with Russian hackers they are now fighting their own third party API developer community !!
I received this email 30 minutes ago stating that Twitter is suing me??
Basically they feel that my application - www.MyTwitterButler.com does the following.
1/ That anyone using the API to auto follow people are breaching the TOS??
2/ That no one can use the word “Twitter” in their domain
3/ That somehow people might be confused my application is related to twitter even though every page is labeled
“Copyright 2009 © My Twitter Butler - Not related in anyway to Twitter Inc, if I owned Twitter would i be spending my time building this app??
Is this the end for Twitter 3rd party developers?
Have they forgotten that it was people like me who saw a need and built an application using the publicly defined Twitter API to add value to the Twitter ecosystem?
I have asked Twitters lawyers for a conference call tomorrow to clear up ‘WHY’ they feel anyone using the twitter API to auto follow people is an illegal act and will be looking forward to their answers about ‘WHY’ the twitter API was built in the first place if they want to sue people for using it.
www.MyTwitterButler.com/I’m_Being_Sued
Regards,
Dean Collins
de...@MyTwitterButler.com
+1-212-203-4357 New York
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney
in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001 (London
in-dial).
FENWICK & WEST LLP
SILICON VALLEY CENTER 801 CALI FORN IA STREET MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94041
TEL 650.988.8500 FAX 650.938.5200 WWW.FENWICK.COM
August 11, 2009
KAREN WEBB
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL AND EMAIL
Dean Collins
Attn: MyTwitterButler.com
dean@cognation.net
Re: Infringement of Twitter, Inc.'s Trademark Rights
Dear Mr. Collins:
EMAIL KWEBB@FENWICK.COM
DIRECT DIAL (650) 335·7656
This firm represents Twitter, Inc. ("Twitter"), owner of the TWITTER trademark and
the popular social networking and micro-blogging website at www.twitter.com. We are
contacting you regarding your violation of Twitter's Terms of Service ("TOS") and spam
rules, and your infringement of Twitter's trademark rights.
Twitter has recently become aware that you have registered and are using the
MyTwitterButler.com domain, where you advertise and offer for sale the "My Twitter Butler"
software that facilitates aggressive and automatic following to Twitter users. On your website
you also claim to have used the same aggressive following techniques. This activity violates
Twitter's TOS and rules.
In addition to the above violations, you are also infringing on Twitter's trademark
rights by using the MyTwitterButler.com domain and the TWITTER trademark. As you are
likely aware, Twitter's extensive and widespread use of its TWITTER trademark provides
Twitter with strong and defensible rights in the mark, and has caused the mark to become
well-known, if not famous, in today's online marketplace. Twitter owns trademark
applications and registrations for its mark in the United States and numerous other countries
for use in connection with its online services, which will provide Twitter with exclusive rights
in the mark.
Twitter has expended significant time and financial resources to build up the
considerable customer recognition and goodwill related to its valuable TWITTER mark. In
addition, in order to protect its investment and valuable intellectual property rights in its
trademark, Twitter is required to prevent others from infringing or diluting the value of its
brand. In light of the importance and distinctiveness of the mark and the strength of Twitter's
legal rights to its valuable intellectual property, please be advised that Twitter is determined to
take whatever steps are necessary to protect its rights in the mark.
Having said that, at this time, we are willing to assume that you did not choose to
misuse Twitter's trademark with the conscious intent of infringing Twitter's rights or trading
off of Twitter's goodwill. Twitter is concerned, however, that your use of My Twitter Butler
and the related domain may cause confusion in the marketplace by suggesting that you and
your site are somehow affiliated with Twitter, or are endorsed, sponsored, or approved by
Twitter, which would result in an infringement of Twitter's valuable trademark rights.
In light of the above, we must demand that you immediately:
1. deactivate the MyTwitterButler.com website;
2. transfer the MyTwitterButler.com domain to Twitter;
3. comply with Twitter's TOS and rules, which includes stopping your aggressive
and automatic following and offering techniques and software for others to
aggressively or automatically follow; and
4. stop all use of the My Twitter Butler name, the TWITTER mark, or any other
name, logo, or domain name that includes TWITTER or any confusingly similar
term.
Please respond to me no later than August 24, 2009, to confirm that you have
complied with these demands and to obtain domain transfer instructions. Twitter is hopeful
that this matter can be resolved quickly and amicably. If, however, you do not comply with
these requests, Twitter will be forced to consider suspending your Twitter accounts and take
such steps as it deems necessary to protect its intellectual property rights.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
KAW
From: Karen Webb
[mailto:KW...@fenwick.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009
8:55 PM
To:
de5ffa48513...@privacy.no-ip.com; Dean Collins
Subject: Letter re
MyTwitterButler.com
Dear Mr. Collins:
Please see the attached letter.
Sincerely,
Karen Webb
Karen A.
Webb | Fenwick &
West LLP
801 California St. | Mountain View, CA
94041
T: 650-335-7656 | F: 650-938-5200
kw...@fenwick.com
-------------------------------------------
IRS Circular 230 Disclosure: To ensure compliance with requirements
imposed by the IRS, we inform you that any U.S. federal tax advice in this
communication (including attachments) is not intended or written by Fenwick
& West LLP to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (i)
avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting,
marketing, or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed
herein.
-------------------------------------------
ATTENTION:
The information contained in this message may be legally privileged and
confidential. It is intended to be read only by the individual or entity
to whom it is addressed or by their designee. If the reader of this message is
not the intended recipient, you are on notice that any distribution of this
message, in any form, is strictly prohibited.
If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the
sender and/or Fenwick & West LLP by telephone at (650) 988-8500 and
delete or destroy any copy of this message.
3. Might be good to avoid the "get more followers" types of apps in the first place...
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * cka...@floodgap.com
-- They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them. -----------------------
peace
Neil
I'm very interested to learn more about the specifics, if there is some developer TOS I'm unaware of.
Any other developer being sued by Twitter today?
(and yes I read the comment I'm not being sued....I'm facing legal action)
Does Twitter inc know that their lawyers are shutting down the third party developer community?
(sorry I'm new to this and freaking out - never had a lawyer sue me like this)
Regards,
Dean Collins
de...@MyTwitterButler.com
+1-212-203-4357 New York
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001 (London in-dial).
Jim
> > If so give me a call - feel free to tweet outwww.MyTwitterButler.com/I
> > 'm_Being_Sued to anyone you want - looking forward to the press
(sorry I'm new to this and freaking out - never had a lawyer sue me like this)
It’s not that simple – if you read the letter they are telling me I have to stop selling the software entirely.
Regards,
Dean Collins
de...@MyTwitterButler.com
+1-212-203-4357 New York
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001 (London in-dial).
Apparently you fail to recall the "MikeRoweSoft.com" case.
Twitter can most definitely enforce their trademark here.
∞ Andy Badera
∞ This email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private
∞ Google me: http://www.google.com/search?q=(andrew+badera)+OR+(andy+badera)
I thought there was a C&D incident last month that revolved around "tweet"?
Thanks, I'd missed that. I only saw the original, unupdated article
that brought up the issue on TechCrunch. Great to know.
--ab
FYI - mashable.com just posted a story on this here
http://mashable.com/2009/08/12/twitter-not-suing-developer/
Interesting to know that if Twitter gets the trademark for "Tweet"
also what about the apps and businesses that have been using it before
the claim like TweetDeck etc etc? Seems they would have a justifiable
claim to the name also? How does that work?
Not sure about the US but where I am if someone has made a stable
reputation from a name they are also entitled to a trademark clause
for it regardless if they officially trademarked it. (in my own words)
"The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an
unregistered mark may be protectable only within the geographical area
within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it
may be reasonably expected to expand."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and don't play one on TV either so seek
your own legal council regarding it.
The decision in any legal action would set the precedent most likely.
It's essentially an interpretation of contract case.
I'm not expressing an opinion on this one way or the other, but what a
lot of people don't realize about US trademark law is this: Twitter
doesn't have a choice in this matter. They are *required* to actively
defend their trademark, or they will lose it. This is how the law
works, and it's why you often see companies taking seemingly
unnecessary action against seemingly minor violations (not that I'm
quantifying this as minor). They have to, that's all there is to it.
And if a judge refused to hear the case, that's also setting some
precedent, and forces Twitter to provide clearer terms if they expect
to pursue similar matters in the future.
Might qualify as a safe harbor issue ...
But _ethically_, morally, it doesn't matter.
So has anyone heard from or know any of the other developers? Did they also get an email last night?
Regards,
Dean Collins
de...@MyTwitterButler.com
+1-212-203-4357 New York
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001 (London in-dial).
> What is Twitters real stance on auto following? In there API they
> prohibit "mass following" so what does that mean exactly. More than
> 1, 100? In my app, I had planned on integrating some meaniful auto
> following
I'm sure that someone could clarify "stance" if you could clarify
"meaningful". :-)
I think what's missing from the API here isn't hard limits, but a
shared vocabulary for describing social design.
We have this in the API TOS:
4. Do not create a bot to promote mass following. Twitter
enables users to find and connect with people. Mass
following does not help users find interesting connections.
Applications found to be promoting valueless mass-following
or following-ponzi schemes will be promptly blacklisted. So
please, spend your time developing something that helps
users find people with interesting connections.
It's clear to me that the intent of the rule is an appeal to social
design. "What is mass following?" is the wrong question. The right
questions would be "What are interesting connections?" and "How do I
help people find them?"
I'm writing a game application that might auto return follows because
it relies on DMs for a communication channel. I don't have any doubts
about where this app stands with this rule. Finding other people who
play the game definitely helps users find interesting connections.
Another app might autofollow those who post on certain topics and
retweet posts that are on-topic for the Bot, effectively amplifying
certain channels and making it easier to find posts and posters. I
think that this is likely an edge case. A bot that doesn't provide any
additional filtering or processing over a saved search doesn't really
serve any purpose other than promoting a mass following, while an
application that adds value to the data stream could develop an immense
following because it "helps users find people with interesting
connections."
Chris Babcock
Hi Neil
So i guess what Fenwick and Webb are
saying is if i manually log into twitter and click to follow each of the people
who just wrote about my application "thats ok"
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=mytwitterbutler
BUT if i use a little .Net application to do it "Then I'm breaking the ‘Law’ and must - Cease and Desist"
Cheers,
Dean
IANAL, but, I think the horse has already left the barn for Twitter.
Unless someone is building a short-message service called "Twitter" it's
hard to claim dilution here.
The few years that Twitter hasn't policed the infringing use of their
mark should be reasonable basis for estoppel, too.
However, all legal issues aside, they can still shut down third-party
services from using their API or otherwise accessing their service,
which is probably "stronger" than the actual legal recourse they may be
entitled to.
--
Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/
Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/
"He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)
"First they came for the Spammers and I didn’t speak up, because I
wasn’t a Spammer."
Today's society is to worried about offending someone to acknowledge
the fact that YES there are univseral rights and universal wrongs.
That is not to say that there isn't a difference between premeditated
murder and self defense but it is perfectly acceptable to say that
Premeditated Murder is ALWAYS wrong, even if for some reason it isn't
illegal.
In this case spamming is ALWAYS wrong. Again you need to allow for
definitions. Asking to receive announcements from Dell and then having
Dell follow you is on thing. But having someone autofollow you with
800 different PC resellers becasue you posted a tweet saying "look at
the great deal #Dell has today" is WRONG.
Emotional and personal beliefs SHOULD have a place in legal context
and largely do in our society (read up on Jury nullification if you're
interested)
As another extreme example: Datamining Myspace (if it's possible I've
never worked with it) for 12 year olds names and addresses etc...
COULD have a purposeful use in advertising but if your $12 product is
being used by 99% of people to find children to attack then your
product is WRONG and needs to come off the market.
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Charles<charles....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I love how in this discussion people keep trying to bring emotion and
> personal beliefs into a legal context.
>
> So he made a tool for spammers. What does that have to do with
> anything?
>
> "First they came for the Spammers and I didn’t speak up, because I
> wasn’t a Spammer."
> *SNIP*
I believe this show pre-dates the use of twit, and nay pre-date
Twitter. I seem to recall at some point Leo Laporte would not even use
Twitter as a result of feeling they were infinging on his name.
I don't know the trademark status with regard to this, but he has been
vocal about it to say the least.
If anything, Laporte has prior art in this one.
--
Scott
Iphone says hello.
Honest question honest answer ....
If someone follows me, I'd like to find out about them and see if I'd
like to follow them, I'd like to consider becoming friends with this
person.
How can I do that if 80% of my follows are Real Estate Agents. It
wastes my time, it's annoying and pollutes my inbox. I think you'll
find quite a few people are tired of this annoyance. I'd like to get
to know my followers not have 3000 numpties following me.
ATB
Neil
really, glad you cleared that up ;-)
I pity the fool who wakes up to this thread in the morning :-)
The deal with MikeRoweSoft is a different issue then this one. Mike
Rowe was perfectly fine in his use. However when Microsoft sent him a
C&D and said they would pay $
Zac Bowling
If I post a tweet mentioning "photography" I get 5-10 new followers in
a few minutes. Use the word "cock" or "pussy" and the auto follow rate
is higher. Hash tags are vulnerable here as well.
In most cases, I've yet to see them come back and solicit me in any
way, so I will never notice them aside from my wrongly inflated follow
metrics.
Under what conditions could any automated system follow someone in a
meaningful way? There is no way to tell context.
My suggestion is that the apps should bring in a list of suggested
followers. The user of the app must review the list, and the
corresponding tweets and decide to follow or not.
Further, after a follow has been established, you should not
communicate with that person in an unsolicited way. Treat it like
email/spam.
If I am bashing a brand and they want to make good on my issues, they
can tweet me. They need not even follow me to start this relationship.
If they want to DM me they can then start that relationship.
For Starbucks to auto follow because I said "starbucks sucks" is not
meaningful.
To me, the nature of auto follow shows a wanting to use Twitter as a
way to market, brand, and build relationships. That much is fine. But
they want to do so in as easy a way possible. That is where I draw the
line.
If you want to market to me, you must put in the time to learn about
me and my value to your brand. Having a robot do it for you is dirty,
and in the end, will probably hurt more than help.
If someone can tell me how automatic auto follow is not analogous to
the end result of a spam network, my opinion may change. In the end,
there is no easy way to build and establish relationships with your
end users. Either do the work, or stop abusing Twitter.
* The above statements are a generality, the OP may have learned a
meaningful way to auto follow that I am not seeing. I do not intend to
call out the OP in any way.
--
Scott
Iphone says hello.
--
Scott
Iphone says hello.
On Aug 12, 2009, at 6:04 AM, Dewald Pretorius <dpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Logically, isn't it necessary that a clear and unambiguous definition
> of "aggressive following" to be publicly available before any legal
> action can be based on it?
The deal with MikeRoweSoft is a different issue then this one. Mike
Rowe was perfectly fine in his use. However when Microsoft sent him a
C&D and said they would pay $100 (IIRC) for his domain. His mistake
was saying "yah, maybe for a $1,000,000.00" in jest. Doing so was
enough to claim that his intent wasn't for his own his own fair use
but to hold Microsoft to pay for it. Microsoft tried to force it to
domain arbitration when it turned into a PR issue for Microsoft being
seen as the big bad bully for taking down a 16 year old kids personal
page, so they backed down and gave him a bunch of free stuff.
Using Twitter in a domain name directly related to a service that
involves Twitter is a whole other issue that pretty much can get you
in a lot of trouble.
Zac Bowling
FYI - mashable.com just posted a story on this here
http://mashable.com/2009/08/12/twitter-not-suing-developer/
Interesting to know that if Twitter gets the trademark for "Tweet"
also what about the apps and businesses that have been using it before
the claim like TweetDeck etc etc? Seems they would have a justifiable
claim to the name also? How does that work?
Not sure about the US but where I am if someone has made a stable
reputation from a name they are also entitled to a trademark clause
for it regardless if they officially trademarked it. (in my own words)
"The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an
unregistered mark may be protectable only within the geographical area
within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it
may be reasonably expected to expand."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and don't play one on TV either so seek
your own legal council regarding it.
The quote below, clearly states that Twitter is not going to protect
this mark. That being the case, they will lose the mark, making the
filing and costs associated with it a complete waste.
The statement below very well may invalidate the mark entirely.
On Aug 12, 2009, at 2:52 AM, Rich wrote:
> I'm not aware of this but this link http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/may-tweets-be-with-you.html
> ,
> published only last month says
>
> "We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to
> Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of "going
> after" the wonderful applications and services that use the word in
> their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use
> of the word Tweet."
--
Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *
I am not a lawyer, but everything I have read about this makes the below impossible. If you have a trademark on a name, you MUST protect it. Failure to protect it, results in loss of the mark.
The quote below, clearly states that Twitter is not going to protect this mark. That being the case, they will lose the mark, making the filing and costs associated with it a complete waste.
If I am interested in Person X, I can look at who is following him,
and know that others are probably of like minds. I can dig into their
list of followers and following, and build deeper relationships that
are only separated by small degrees.
If I go to someone's account and they have 500 followers, 90% of them
are adult porn and social media experts, not only do I get the wrong
impression as to what that person is about, but I also have a
completely off kilter signal to noise ratio.
On Aug 12, 2009, at 10:07 AM, Dewald Pretorius wrote:
> In other words, what does it matter if 50,000 undesirable accounts
> follow you, except for perhaps a minor personal irritation? Do you
> want to be selective about who is allowed and who is not allowed to
> follow you?
--
Universal wrongs?
YOU are WRONG.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
See what I did there?
Perhaps I'm being daft, but how can someone following you be "spam" or
"wrong", regardless of whether it is manual or auto follow?
They won't unless they are stupid. After all, Twitter gives
you no way to control who follows you, and most people
understand this.
> Followers do no, zero, nada harm.
> Just let them be.
Agreed.
Owkaye
You're wrong.
SPAM only exists when you do NOT ask for commercial messages
to be sent to you, and in this case clearly you are asking
for it.
Owkaye
I guess I care so little about who is following me that I
never bothered to learn about this. Now that I know about
it I still have no use for it, and I never will ... but it's
good to know it's available to others I guess.
Owkaye
> Personally I think that is a mutilation of the use and purpose of
> Twitter. I surely hope people would not judge me based on who is
> following me.
I would not judge you. No, I never take it that far. However,
consider if a politician was on Twitter, and a mass follow of spam
porn bots hit that person up. People unlike you and I, and others on
the dev list here, very well will get the wrong impression, simply for
lack of understanding how this all works.
Whether it is a mutilation of the use and purpose, I can certainly see
your point. Though to be honest, I do not know a person who has not
looked up one person, to find who they follow and who follows them.
It very much is the entire premise of myspace, facebook, and linked in.
I personally use it for that purpose all the time, though I have
learned based on username and profile picture how to discern a real
user and a bot pretty easily with relatively good accuracy.
It does muddy the pool, and make me have more pages of stuff to wade
through.
> The only way one can maintain a "clean" list of people who follow you
> is to block those whom you don't want as followers.
Also, you can privatize your account, which to be honest, I wish was
not even an option, as that indeed is a mutilation of the use and
purpose of twitter in my humble opinion.
But tell me how feasible it is to remove followers once you get past a
few thousand?
> It is going to
> cause the suspension of many innocent Twitter accounts if people block
> others simply because they do not agree with their political views,
> the way they comb their hair, or their profession.
Can you elaborate on this? How does a block of a twitter account end
up as a account suspension? Do multiple blocks tally up and end up
being used as a way to suspend an account?
> Followers do no, zero, nada harm. Just let them be.
I think I have shown how they do in fact harm. Even at a very basic
level, if a army of bots were to follow you, say, a million of them,
what would you do? You yourself would look like part of the army, you
would not be able to maintain that account easily, if you put aside
your ability to programatically remove those bots.
Follower and following as also an at a glance metric I use to see how
interesting someone may be. If they have 5000 followers, but only
follow back 100, I can gauge immediately the type of twitter use that
person is. If they have 5000 followers and around the same following
counts, I know there is no way they are engaging all 5000 of those
people, and that account has less value to me.
These are pretty rough generalizations, but I certainly do not agree
with the "no harm" statement. It just depends on your use and how you
define harm, which to me is defined as inconvenience.
> On Aug 12, 3:28 pm, Scott Haneda <talkli...@newgeo.com> wrote:
>> If I go to someone's account and they have 500 followers, 90% of them
>> are adult porn and social media experts, not only do I get the wrong
>> impression as to what that person is about, but I also have a
>> completely off kilter signal to noise ratio.
--
On Aug 12, 2009, at 11:54 AM, JDG wrote:
> sure they do. it's called "blocking". every time a pain in the ass
> porn bot or "social media expert" following 100x more people than
> follow them follows me, i block them. then they can't follow me.
--
Thanks, and Keep STRONG!!
Vincent Wright
Director Of Community
MyLinkingPowerForum.ning.com |
There are universal wrongs. Guns aren't on of them. Premeditated murder is.
So is spam.
Maybe I'm slow but what are you trying to get at?
-Bob
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Dossy Shiobara<do...@panoptic.com> wrote:
>
*SNIP*
On Aug 12, 2009, at 12:18 PM, Vincent Wright wrote:
> "Would Twitter Sue Bambi For Being Twitterpated? :-) ":
> http://mylinkingpowerforum.ning.com/group/twitterpated/forum/topics/would-twitter-sue-bambi-for
--
LMAO, you win at the intarwebs, sir.
All these Twitter spammers are just looking for a little twitterpation,
y' know? That's why they use those sexy avatar pics. It's bait for
twitterpation.