The High Court ordered Twitter International Company to provide two courier businesses with information it held about the person or people behind a parody account using Fastway branding. The order was conditional on the plaintiffs’ solicitors undertaking that the information would be used only to seek redress for the wrongs complained of.
Mr Justice Allen delivered the judgment on 5 June 2020, on an application for a Norwich Pharmacal order. The plaintiffs were Parcel Connect Limited, trading as Fastway Couriers, and A & G Couriers Limited. The order required Twitter to disclose relevant details within seven days of service of the perfected order.
The plaintiffs said an account using the name “Fastway Couriers Ireland” and handle @fastwayIRE appeared in December 2019. It used their business name and logo and posted comments about parcel deliveries. The judgment described the posts as mocking and vulgar. The account’s biography identified it as a parody account. After the account’s name changed several times, it most recently appeared as “Fartway Deliveries Ireland”, with the handle “@fartwayIRE”. It had been removed before the hearing; the defendant told the court it was deactivated by its holder.
The plaintiffs initially sought injunctions to remove the account and restrain publication, as well as disclosure of the account holder’s identity. With the account removed, they did not pursue the injunctions. Twitter said it would not release user information without a court order and did not argue against the legal test for disclosure.
The judge was not persuaded that the plaintiffs had shown that the account operator was passing themselves off as the businesses. He accepted, however, that the plaintiffs had a case to make that the posts portrayed them as incompetent and inefficient and held them up to ridicule. He also found a strong prima facie case that use of the name and mark had damaged goodwill. These were threshold assessments on the disclosure application, not final findings that the alleged wrongs had been proved.
The order covers details held by Twitter relating to the identity of the person or people who created or controlled the account, including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and IP addresses associated with log-ins and log-outs. The judgment did not guarantee that the information would identify the account holder. The balance of the motion was struck out by consent, and there was no order as to costs.