http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20031231S0004
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by America Online (AOL) against a group of Floridians the company accused of conspiring to spam its users, lawyers for the defendants announced late Tuesday.
The case, which was dismissed last week by Chief Judge Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, centered around claims by AOL that a number of Florida-based computer technicians conspired with others to send bulk e-mail through AOL's system, said lawyers with the Virginia-based firm Albo & Oblon in a statement.
Hilton ruled AOL had failed to demonstrate that ?Virginia had jurisdiction over the Florida defendants simply because AOL's business resides in Virginia and the alleged bulk emails had gone through Virginia,? said Albo & Oblon.
In the ruling, Hilton also said that asserting jurisdiction over the defendants would violate their right to due process, and that merely enabling someone to transmit material over the Internet was insufficient to permit such jurisdiction.
In a statement, AOL said the decision was based on a ?mere technicality,? and left open the option to resubmit the lawsuit -- first filed in April, 2003 -- in Virginia, or file in Florida.
AOL has been aggressively pursuing spammers, which it says flood its network with over two billion messages per day, in court. It has also been instrumental in getting tough anti-spam laws passed in its home state of Virginia, and has been beefing up its anti-spam filtering tools for its 35 million users.
In April, AOL filed five lawsuits against spammers in Florida, Washington state, and Maryland who it claimed had repeatedly sent large numbers of junk mail messages -- shilling everything from health care products and software to college degrees and pornography -- using techniques designed to circumvent the online service's filtering systems.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by America Online (AOL) against a group of Floridians the company accused of conspiring to spam its users, lawyers for the defendants announced late Tuesday.
The case, which was dismissed last week by Chief Judge Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, centered around claims by AOL that a number of Florida-based computer technicians conspired with others to send bulk e-mail through AOL's system, said lawyers with the Virginia-based firm Albo & Oblon in a statement.
Hilton ruled AOL had failed to demonstrate that ?Virginia had jurisdiction over the Florida defendants simply because AOL's business resides in Virginia and the alleged bulk emails had gone through Virginia,? said Albo & Oblon.
In the ruling, Hilton also said that asserting jurisdiction over the defendants would violate their right to due process, and that merely enabling someone to transmit material over the Internet was insufficient to permit such jurisdiction.
In a statement, AOL said the decision was based on a ?mere technicality,? and left open the option to resubmit the lawsuit -- first filed in April, 2003 -- in Virginia, or file in Florida.
AOL has been aggressively pursuing spammers, which it says flood its network with over two billion messages per day, in court. It has also been instrumental in getting tough anti-spam laws passed in its home state of Virginia, and has been beefing up its anti-spam filtering tools for its 35 million users.
In April, AOL filed five lawsuits against spammers in Florida, Washington state, and Maryland who it claimed had repeatedly sent large numbers of junk mail messages -- shilling everything from health care products and software to college degrees and pornography -- using techniques designed to circumvent the online service's filtering systems.
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