Finally, Twitter’s making a move toward verified accounts — with the news coming out from the service in response to reports it had settled a lawsuit with the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony La Russa, over how someone apparently impersonated him on the service. Twitter denies any settlement.

Earlier today, St. Louis Today reported that Twitter has settled a trademark infringement suit with La Russa over what he called the “unauthorized use” of his name. Someone had grabbed @tonylarussa and apparently was pretending to be him.

Twitter, in a blog post today, denied any settlement. The post also said that Twitter would be launching “Verified Accounts” later this summer:

The experiment will begin with public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation. We hope to verify more accounts in the future but due to the resources required, verification will begin only with a small set.

Twitter could easily verify a larger number accounts by providing automated verification in a variety of ways. My Time For Verified Twitter Accounts & An Easy Way To Do It covers some options on this.

Still, it’s a start, and a welcome one. Verified Accounts will have a special seal that shows, as illustrated in the screenshot above.

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About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan