Last month musician Kanye West ranted on his blog about an impostor on Twitter using his name to “tweet”. The singer claimed that he was too busy to be creative to bother with the micro-blogging site. Recently, a sports figure was also miffed with the site and had gone as far as suing the social network over an account that used his name.  St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa filed a case against Twitter last month in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco.  The lawsuit was filed for trademark infringement, misappropriation of name and likeness and cybersquatting.  La Russa and Twitter have already reached a settlement. 

According to the lawsuit that was filed, the Twitter account that used his name to post messages caused the sports manager emotional stress and has also affected his reputation negatively.  The Twitter account has already been deleted.  But La Russa and his lawyers already have in their possession screenshots of the account and of the “demeaning” messages that were posted on the site.  One of the messages, called “tweets” said “Lost 2 out of 3, but we made it out of Chicago without one drunk driving incident or dead pitcher”.  The tweet referred to two Cardinal players who died- one of a heart attack and another of an auto-accident (the reliever’s blood-alcohol level was measured by the medical examiners at 0.157, almost twice beyond the legal limit) and the driving under the influence charge that La Russa pleaded guilty to in 2007.

While Twitter has a policy against impersonation- “You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users”, it does allow parodies.  According to the help page of Twitter, “Pretending to be another person or business as entertainment or in order to deceive is impersonation”.  According to the help page “The standard for defining parody is, "would a reasonable person be aware that it's a joke." 

It was La Russa’s family lawyer Gregory L. McCoy who settled the suit. The exact details of the settlement have not been made public but La Russa confirmed that part of the suit involves a donation to the Animal Rescue Foundation, La Russa’s animal charity.

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