BOSTON– Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email and who sued gossip blog Gawker for $35 million for saying he didn’t , has received $750,000 after both parties reached a settlement. In addition, Gawker will permanently remove its libelous article about him, which denied Ayyadurai’s invention of email.
Separately, Ayyadurai filed a new lawsuit against TechDirt.com in Boston for $15 million earlier this month. The lawsuit is filed for defaming him in 14 different articles published from September 2014 through November 2016. Ayyadurai seeks a minimum of $15 million in damages in the new lawsuit, according to a press release.
Regarding settlement with Gawker, Ayyadurai said that this is a historic victory for truth.
“Americans have no tolerance for fake news, lies or cyberbullying. A 14-year-old kid working in Newark, New Jersey in 1978 invented email. This settlement honors that innovation.”
Ayyadurai said that he had sued Gawker for $35 million, but settled for $750,000.
“We settled and they also removed three defamatory articles,” Ayyadurai told INDIA New England News in a telephone interview.
The press release said that there is no reasonable dispute that Ayyadurai is the inventor of email.
Ayyadurai holds four degrees from MIT, including a Ph.D, and is a world-renowned systems scientist, inventor and entrepreneur. He is founder and CEO of multiple successful businesses including CytoSolve, Systems Health and EchoMail. He has published in major scientific journals such as IEEE, Nature Neuroscience and CELL’s Biophysical Journal, and has authored ten books, including the just-released The Future of Email (General Interactive, LLC, Nov. 2016) which discusses the history of email, its present and its future.
Ayyadurai is represented by attorneys Charles J. Harder of Harder Mirell & Abrams LLP in Los Angeles, California, and Timothy Cornell of Cornell Dolan, P.C. in Boston.
