Twitter is the top word of 2009, beating out Obama, H1N1 and stimulus.  Other tech terms and phrases making the top list  include 2.0 and cloud computing.    Of course Twitter can’t be that popular without creating an opportunity for litigation.   Some Twitter scenarios:

A news show created a twitter feed featuring a photo of its 3 news anchors.  One of the tweets announcing 3 accused of gang rape, was picked up complete with the photos of the 3 news anchors beside it.  Apparently, the station’s general manager and news director have been temporarily suspended because of the misstep.

A woman tweeted negative comments about her apartment manager and the manager sued her for over $50,000 for defamation.

A PR firm discovered, 2 months after the twitter account was set up, that an imposter was releasing malicious tweets under its name.  The PR firm sued to obtain the name of the imposter and take over the twitter account name.  The imposter turned out to be a competitor of the PR firm, making it a potential trademark infringement case.

There’s also a fair amount of twitter-related litigation involving celebrities.  For those stories,  check out the celebrity examples on the Twitter section of The Hollywood Reporter Esq., blog.