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A lawsuit filed in New York alleging Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer may have lifted the idea for the Huffington Post will go ahead after a judge ruled the claim potentially had merit Wednesday.
HuffPo has been around and kicking since 2005, and in November, former Kerry-Edwards campaign advisers Peter Daou and James Boyce filed suit alleging that Daou initially proposed a “new kind of Democratic news-reporting website and blogging ‘ring’ or collective” to Huffington. The pair say Huffington forged ahead with plans to launch the site- which obviously became the Huffington Post- without the involvement or compensation of Daou and Boyce. The suit is not the first time Huffington has been accused of using the ideas of others to advance her blog network, a company that sold to AOL for hundreds of millions of dollars earlier this year.
When news of the suit’s progression in court broke, Huffington Post spokesman Mario Ruiz commented on behalf of the site:
“Seven out of the eight claims were thrown out. To describe this as any kind of victory is as laughable as their lawsuit.”
In the ruling, the judge noted that Huffington herself may have conceded that the idea for HuffPo was novel and concrete in an interview with Playboy in 2006 where she said:
“There’s a tremendous advantage in being the first with something .. We were the first hybrid of news and group blog.”
