Techdirt victor: Judge dismisses censorious lawsuit from man who didn’t invent email

A litigious bully’s censorious multi-million-dollar lawsuit against one of my favorite blogs has just been shitcanned.

A great win against a censorious thug and his thug-for-money lawyers. https://t.co/qibaiTjZjW

— VeryFinePopehat (@Popehat) September 6, 2017

I’ll let Mike Masnick, operator of Techdirt, explain:

As you likely know, for most of the past nine months, we've been dealing with a defamation lawsuit from Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email. This is a claim that we have disputed at great length and in great detail, showing how email existed long before Ayyadurai wrote his program. We pointed to the well documented public history of email, and how basically all of the components that Ayyadurai now claims credit for preceded his own work. We discussed how his arguments were, at best, misleading, such as arguing that the copyright on his program proved that he was the "inventor of email" -- since patents and copyrights are very different, and just because Microsoft has a copyright on "Windows" it does not mean it "invented" the concept of a windowed graphical user interface (because it did not). As I have said, a case like this is extremely draining -- especially on an emotional level -- and can create massive chilling effects on free speech.

A few hours ago, the judge ruled and we prevailed. The case has been dismissed and the judge rejected Ayyadurai's request to file an amended complaint. We are certainly pleased with the decision and his analysis, which notes over and over again that everything that we stated was clearly protected speech, and the defamation (and other claims) had no merit.

One setback is the judge refused to dismiss the lawsuit under California’s strong anti-SLAPP law (which allows targets of spurious lawsuits like this one to have them dismissed on First Amendment grounds), instead having the case tried in Massachusetts, which has no anti-SLAPP law at all. Otherwise, not only would Ayyadurai’s bullshit suit have been dismissed much sooner, he would’ve been saddled with Techdirt’s court fees as well.

As it is, Ayyadurai has already vowed to appeal, with his lawyer making noise about how “[f]alse speech is not protected by the Constitution” – which a) it absolutely is, except in certain specific conditions that aren’t remotely met in this case (seriously, a lawyer said this?), and b) is irrelevant since Techdirt never lied about Ayyadurai: he is a fraud whose entire claim to fame rests on his purported invention of email, which already existed for years before he came along, and who tries to sue anyone who calls him out into silence. Just read the ruling: Ayyadurai didn’t even try to contest the facts of Masnick’s claims, likely because he knew it would never hold up to any scrutiny in court.

Incidentally, this is a man who’s running for Congress in Massachusetts to take Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D) Senate seat. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear he’s also a big fan of Trump.

Edit (@ 8:43 PM ET): Changed the title from “Techdirt victor! (For now)” to make it more informative, and made a few other tweaks.