"Troll Tracker" was a popular blogger in the world of patent litigation. In fact, the blogger confessed to being a patent lawyer. The focus of the blog was "patent trolls," the name patent lawyers give to businesses that purchase patents and then sue large companies to recover for infringement. While Troll Tracker was blogging away, Cisco and other companies that were ending up as defendants in patent troll suits were lobbying Congress for changes in the law that could afford them some protection from what they felt were the willy-nilly attacks of the trolls. However, Cisco was not aware that Troll Tracker, whose site the company had commended to members of Congress, was its own in-house patent counsel, Rick Frenkel.

Frenkel had blogged that two plaintiffs' patent lawyers had altered dates on documents, a charge that amounted to an accusation of felony misconduct by the lawyers (and the lawyers were named). In addition, Frenkel had allowed such posts on his Troll Tracker blog as "If you shoot and kill Ray Niro tonight, I would consider it a justifiable killing." (Niro was a plaintiff's patent lawyer.)

Eventually, through a subpoena to Google, the lawyers affected were able to track down Frenkel's identity, even though he had his blog hosted by a server in Korea and put down his address as one in Afghanistan.

The lawyers have sued both Frenkel and Cisco for defamation. Cisco has taken full responsibility for the problems but notes that Troll Tracker played an important role in highlighting issues and that it does not want to cut off blogs all together.

The blogosphere represents a risk for companies, despite the fact that many are embracing it. Sun Microsystems indicates that it has 4,000 employees with blogs (its CEO and general counsel are part of the group of blogging employees). Cisco has 12 in-house blogs and 75 employees who blog, including its CEO. However, since the Troll Tracker "outing," Cisco has developed new policies that require the bloggers to state that they are employees of Cisco when they are discussing opinions related to matters that affect Cisco......................

Discussion Questions
1. What are the rights of employees on blogs?
2. What are the companies' obligations to them?