The elves and the Schoemaker

Which way will the scales of justice tip?

Twitter has seen itself at the forefront of a lawsuit recently that has caused the social network to introduce verified accounts. People posing as celebrities and public figureheads can damage reputations and it is this that Twitter has fallen foul of.

Internet marketing guru Jeremy Schoemaker is now in the middle of his own legal battle with Google employee Keyen Farrell for use of his brand name. The Shoemoney blog started in 2003. At the same time Schoemaker took his ringtone community company, Next Pimp, to “the next level”.

Since then, Schoemaker has had success after success and his blog now serves a loyal readership of over 30,000 people, keen to bathe in his fountain of internet marketing wisdom.

With such a huge following, Schoemaker is no stranger to stragglers clinging to the success of the Shoemoney trademark- many have used the ’shoemoney’ keyword as part of their own Google AdSense campaigns to boost views, thus breaking the AdSense terms of usage- but none were taken to court.

In January this year, however, one such violator proved rather more tricky to get rid of. Several unanswered emails from Google later, a court-ordered subpoena was attained to get the details of a website using the keyword ’shoemaker’ in Google’s AdSense program.

With the details of the culprit, Schoemaker was able to make his move. “He played dumb every time and was very deceitful with his responses” Schoemaker said of Ferrell, the alleged copyright thief.

One of Schoemaker’s friends then noticed a number of the Ferrell’s Facebook friends worked for Google and voiced his suspicions to the marketing mogul. After investigating a cached version of the culprit’s Linkedin profile, and a call to Google in New York, Schoemaker realised he was dealing with a Google employee- though it is still unclear as to whether he had used his position to bypass trademark filters.

Now, Ferrell is counter-suing against Schoemaker for defamation. Schoemaker has been quoted, saying Ferell is a “corrupt employee”, which, according to the “AdSense Accounts Strategist”- a title that has since been removed from his Linkedin profile- has caused “public scorn and ridicule as a result of Schoemaker’s public comments”.

It all seems a big legal mess but it would appear that neither side is backing down. May the right man win.

Source: Techcrunch, Shoemoney

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