The injunction was initially intended to prevent details of the case – an alleged extra-marital relationship between Giggs and Thomas – from being published in The Sun.

According to The Sunday Times,[6] the first mention on Twitter of the alleged relationship between Giggs and Thomas may have been posted at 10:02 PM BST by James Webley on 14 April 2011, the day of the initial granting of the injunction.

[7] Webley denied being the source of the leak, and pointed to a web page written by a man named Michael Wheeler that he had read on the same day, which he said strongly hinted that Giggs was the person involved.

[8][9] On 8 May 2011, an account on social networking site Twitter was created under the name "Billy Jones", and posted the alleged details of several of the anonymised privacy injunctions that had been mentioned in the media.

[11] On the same date, messages saying that the identity of claimant CTB was Manchester United player Ryan Giggs were posted on Twitter and subsequently reported in a number of non-UK media sources.

[1] It was stated in the ruling that Imogen Thomas had "at some stage engaged the services of Mr Max Clifford", the well-known UK publicist, and that the purpose of meetings Thomas had arranged with the footballer had been "that The Sun was ready to take advantage of these prearranged meetings in order to be able to put forward the claim that it was The Sun which had found him 'romping with a busty Big Brother babe'".

Using London-based law firm Schillings as an advisor, action has been undertaken by the footballer against Twitter in an attempt to obtain information on some of the users involved in naming Giggs.

[19] A blogger for Forbes magazine remarked: "Giggs has not heard of the Streisand effect", observing that mentions of his name had significantly increased after the case against Twitter had been reported in the news.

[22] The headquarters of Twitter are in San Francisco, and legal experts pointed out the difficulties in suing in a United States court, where First Amendment protection applies to freedom of speech.

"[24] On 22 May 2011, the Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, published a thinly-disguised photograph of Ryan Giggs on its front page, with the word "CENSORED" covering his eyes.

[25][26] The paper added in its editorial column, "Today we identify the footballer whose name has been linked to a court superinjunction by thousands of postings on Twitter.

[32] The same afternoon, Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament John Hemming spoke in the House of Commons and used parliamentary privilege to name Ryan Giggs as the footballer CTB.

"[35] On 15 December 2011, Mr Justice Eady accepted that Thomas had not attempted to blackmail the footballer known as CTB, and suggested "There is no longer any point in maintaining the anonymity."

[38] In response to criticism of previous super-injunctions in the UK media, a report by a committee of judges headed by Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger was published on 20 May 2011.

"[30] Member of Parliament John Hemming, who named Ryan Giggs in the House of Commons, described the affair as "a joke", and commented: "The judges' application of privacy law, which is ill conceived to start with, is now close to breaking point, under pressure from the biggest act of civil disobedience seen for many years.

[45] Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, expressed concern about the use of Twitter to break court injunctions, arguing that the site was "not a place for reasoned discussion".