Company sues over its Twitter followers

A company says its 17,000 Twitter followers are worth $42,000 a month.

According to CNN , PhoneDog, a company that reviews mobile gadgets, is suing a former employee for taking those followers with him when he quit.

PhoneDog is headquartered in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

The lawsuit says the employee switched the name on the Twitter account and started sharing information about the competition.  Last week, a federal judge decided to let the case move forward.

Kansas City attorney David Kight with S pencer Fane Britt & Browne says the company is "arguing that all of the Twitter followers are an asset of the company and by me taking them away I'm essentially steeling from the company."

But Kight said it could be tough for the company to prove damages.  His advice to employers in Kansas City?  Get a social media policy.

"You need to have a conversation with your employees before they start posting to Twitter and Facebook about who owns this.  What will happen when they leave?  Is there an intellectual property agreement that says this is our property.  We are going to pay you to do it, we want it to stay when you leave. It's clear most cases are from companies who haven't thought that through," said Kight

Kight says most social media battles involve employees posting negative comments on their personal accounts about their company.

For now, he said the National Labor Relations Board is dealing with many of these social media cases across the country. 

"There's a real struggle.  I think it will be a number of years before we see any laws on the books and it may well be that the courts make it up as they go along as they do with a lot of things," said Kight.