An Internet company has sued one of its former employees, saying the worker cost the company thousands of dollars in lost business when he took 17,000 Twitter followers with him when he left the firm.

PhoneDog LLC filed a lawsuit in July against Noah Kravitz, a writer who worked for the Mount Pleasant, SC, company from 2006 until last year.

Lawyers for the Web site, which reviews mobile devices like phones and tablets, said Kravitz owes them $340,000.

The company said when Kravitz resigned, he changed his Twitter name from PhoneDog_Noah to noahkravitz, and kept his 17,000 followers.

The company said the followers should be treated like a customer list, and are therefore PhoneDog’s property.

PhoneDog said Kravitz should pay $2.50 per follower per month for eight months, or a total of $340,000.

Steve O’Donnell, a patent and intellectual property lawyer, said he hadn’t heard of a similar case. He doubted that each follower is worth the $2.50.