Bell claims that on or about November 6, 2015, King\u2019s College head football coach Jeffery Knarr retweeted a tweet that was initially posted from @NSUBaseball32, a Twitter account operated by Northeastern State University\u2019s RiverHawks baseball team. The retweet, as shown in the lawsuit, can be seen below.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/tweet-winning.png\")
<\/a><\/center>\u201cThe post was made without authorization from Dr. Bell and without attribution\u00a0to Dr. Bell,\u201d the lawsuit reads.<\/p>\n\u201cNeither Defendant King\u2019s College nor Defendant Jeffery Knarr contacted Dr.\u00a0Bell to request permission to use Dr. Bell\u2019s copyrighted work. As of November 14, 2015, the post had received 206 \u2018Retweets\u2019 and 189 \u2018Likes.\u2019 Due to the globally accessible nature of Twitter, the post was accessible by Internet users across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bell says he sent a cease and desist letter to NSU in September 2016 and shortly thereafter NSU removed the post, which removed the retweets. However, this meant that Knarr\u2019s retweet had been online for \u201cat least\u201d 10 months and 21 days.<\/p>\n
To put the icing on the cake, Bell also holds the trademark to the phrase \u201cWinning Isn\u2019t Normal\u201d, so he\u2019s suing Knarr and his King\u2019s College employer for trademark infringement too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Defendants included Plaintiff\u2019s trademark twice in the Twitter post. The first instance was as the title of the post, with the mark shown in letters which\u00a0were emphasized by being capitalized, bold, and underlined,\u201d the lawsuit notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second instance was at the end of the post, with the mark shown in letters which were emphasized by being capitalized, bold, underlined, and followed by three\u00a0exclamation points.\u201d<\/p>\n
Describing what appears to be a casual retweet as \u201cwillful, intentional and purposeful\u201d infringement carried out \u201cin disregard of and with indifference to Plaintiff\u2019s rights,\u201d Bell demands damages and attorneys fees from Knarr and his employer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a direct and proximate result of said infringement by Defendants, Plaintiff is\u00a0entitled to damages in an amount to be proven at trial,\u201d the lawsuit concludes.<\/p>\n
Since the page from the book retweeted by Knarr is a small portion of the overall work, there may be a fair use defense. Nevertheless, defending this kind of suit is never cheap, so it\u2019s probably fair to say there will already be a considerable amount of regret among the defendants at ever having set eyes on Bell\u2019s 35-year-old book.<\/p>\n
Source: \u00a0![\"TorrentFreak\"](\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/torrentfreak.png\")
<\/a> TorrentFreak.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"