• by Ray Schultz , July 2, 2018

Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims he invented email 40 years ago, is disputing a court judgment that he was not defamed when Techdirt called him a “fraud,” a “charlatan,” a “liar” and a “fake.”

The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled last year that such terms are rhetorical hyperbole that nobody would take as factual.

But Ayyadurai argues that they go far beyond hyperbole, and filed an appeal last Thursday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Ayyadurai also contends that the court erred when it said that Techdirt was not guilty of malice against him.

The defendants include Michael David Masnick and Leigh Beadon.

The papers state that in 1978, Ayyadurai "created a program he named 'email'."

They add that this program was “an electronic replica of the interoffice paper-based communication system with familiar features such as inbox and outbox, drafts, folders, attachments, return receipts, address book, archives, sorting, bulk distribution, and the memo, with its now ubiquitous terms 'To,''‘From,' 'Date,' 'Subject,' 'CC,' and 'Bcc.'

Techdirt published a series of defamatory articles, using the above pejoratives. One was titled, “Why Is Huffington Post Running A Multi-Part Series to Promote the Lies Of A Guy Who Pretended To Invent Email?"

These articles ran  from 2014 through 2016. Ayyadurai filed his defamation suit early in 2017.

The appeal, first covered by Ars Technica, concedes that “email has a complex history.” And it acknowledges that debating who made which contributions “would not constitute defamatory speech.”

However, it argues that Techdirt “went far beyond such speech” by alleging that …was committing a fraud on the public, deliberately pulling the wool over their eyes and deliberately lying to them.”