Arianna Huffington Loses Ruling In Fight Over HuffPo Concept

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Is Queen Arianna Huffington a thief? A jury will make the determination.

A lawsuit filed by Peter Daou and James Boyce — both former advisers to the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign say in their suit that the Huffington Post was in fact, their idea and Huffington stole it from them, will get to go forward after a New York judge refused to throw out the lawsuit.

Daou says he wrote a memo about a “new kind of Democratic news-reporting website and blogging ‘ring’ or collective” but that Huffington stole the idea and cut him out of the loop before she launched the Huffington Post in May of 2005.

Huffington and co-founder Ken Lerer filed to dismiss the suit but state judge Charles Ramos ruled yesterday that the plaintiffs could continue with their claim under a New York law that allows people to sue if someone steals an idea that is both novel and concrete. In the ruling, the judge noted that Huffington appeared to have conceded that the idea was indeed a new one when she told Playboy in 2006, “There’s a tremendous advantage in being the first with something. We were the first hybrid of news and group blog.”

Judge Ramos found that the plaintiffs had raised enough questions about the origin of the Huffington Post for the issue to be decided at a trial. The ruling may also increase the pressure on Huffington to settle the case before further details about the origins of her site are put before a jury.

SOURCE: Paid Content