Ayyadurai has long claimed that he was the bona fide inventor of what we refer to as email. It’s true that he wrote code for an electronic messaging platform at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1978, and subsequently copyrighted that software, which he referred to as “EMAIL,” four years later.

Ayyadurai’s talent is not lost on anyone — including Masnick. But Masnick, in one of the articles cited in Ayyadurai’s complaint , contends that the email-invention claim  goes too far :

Over at Fortune, Jeff John Roberts has gathered the opinion of media lawyer Ed Klaris, who said TechDirt would likely succeed if this case went to trial:

“This is a classic scientific debate, which is a cornerstone of the First Amendment, second only to political debate. Theories of who invented something as basic as email software code need to be free and open and not constrained by claims of libel,” says Klaris. He adds that TechDirt’s comments about Ayyadurai amount to rhetoric and are part of the debate, and that the claims in question are not provable.

However, as Roberts goes on to note, in order to win at trial, Masnick would have to mount a costly defense — and the cornerstone of Harder’s strategy in the Gawker cases was less about making a case at trial and more about breaking his opponents’ bank. “The expense of mounting a defense across the country may be prohibitive for [Masnick’s] small company,” Roberts writes , “while depositions and other aspects of the legal process would prove time-consuming and expensive.” (Roberts has previously written a thoroughly good explanation of the Thiel-Harder strategy.)

So that’s what’s at stake for Masnick. But what of Ayyadurai? While Harder’s client may succeed in winning a settlement from Masnick, doing so will inevitably lead to more media accounts in which his claims to have been the inventor of email will be treated roughly. In theory, this could provide Ayyadurai with further targets for attempted self-enrichment. But it would come at a cost: increasing public awareness that he’s been making unsupported assertions.