Trademark Lawsuit Against Twitter Dropped

A Tulsa federal court dropped the copyright lawsuit that a natural gas distributor filed against a fashionable social networking website.

Last July, officials of the natural gas company ONEOK recognized an unauthorized account on Twitter that used the company's name and diamond logo and began to contact the website to have the account transferred. When these efforts proved futile, the company filed suit alleging trademark infringement.

ONEOK spokeswoman Megan Washbourne explained to Tulsa World reporters that an anonymous Twitter user was posting ONEOK information, but not on behalf of the company. "As a publically traded company, we need to be able to ensure that all publicly available information is accurate." She added, "These tweets have been passed off to unsuspecting recipients as official statements."

Company representatives have since indicated that the account was recently transferred to ONEOK and the lawsuit was dropped.

Earlier this year, St. Louis Cardinals coach Tony LaRussa sued Twitter claiming unauthorized use of his name, and lawyers representing Newt Gingrich threatened legal action against an advocacy group using the politician's name on the social networking site.