CategoryLegal

August 2, 2011

Patenting whitelisting, then suing people who use it

By laura

3 Min read

2 comments

02August

Thanks to Ken for pointing this one out. A number of companies, including Surewest, AT&T, Cisco and Comcast are being sued by a company called BuyerLeverage for violating a pair of patents because they’re using Return Path as part of their mail filtering decisions. I pulled the docs (1-11-cv-00645-LPS). The patents all seem to center around a system where there is another layer between...

July 15, 2011

Holomaxx v. Yahoo and MS: The hearing

By laura

7 Min read

6 comments

15July

I visited Judge Fogel’s courtroom this morning to listen to the oral motions in the Holomaxx cases. This is a general impression, based on my notes. Nothing here is to be taken as direct quotes from any participant. Any errors are solely my own. With that disclaimer in mind, let’s go. The judge is treating these two cases as basically a single case. When it came time for arguments...

July 11, 2011

Still futile

By laura

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11July

As I mentioned last Thursday, both Yahoo and Microsoft filed oppositions to Holomaxx’s opposition to dismissal. Let me ‘splain… no, there is too much, let me sum up. Holomaxx sued both Microsoft and Yahoo to force MS and Yahoo to stop blocking mail from Holomaxx. The judge dismissed the initial complaint with leave to amend. Holomaxx filed a first amended complaint. Microsoft...

July 7, 2011

Gathering data from PACER

By laura

5 Min read

8 comments

07July

I had someone ask on Facebook about getting some documents off of Pacer. I thought the information may be of use to other people out there. PACER (public access to court electronic records) provides access to public documents filed in the Federal court system. Each court has their own website, but there is one login and the search and document display are the same. Documents cost 8 cents a page...

July 1, 2011

Holomaxx doubles down

By laura

4 Min read

1 comment

01July

Holomaxx has, as expected, filed a motion in opposition to the motion to dismiss filed by both Yahoo (opposition to Yahoo motion and Hotmail (opposition to Microsoft motion). To my mind they still don’t have much of an argument, but seem to believe that they can continue with this. They are continuing to claim that Microsoft is scanning email before the email gets to Microsoft (or Yahoo)...

June 13, 2011

e360 and the appeals court

By laura

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13June

Oral arguments in Spamhaus’ appeal were held last week. Mickey blogged about it on Thursday. I heard from him and a bunch of the Spamhaus folks about it at MAAWG, but was busy enough that I didn’t get a chance to listen to it. Mickey is not exaggerating on how badly the judges, particularly Judge Posner, beat up on e360’s lawyer. More quotes are available at Appeals judges...

June 8, 2011

Spam lawsuit guide

By laura

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08June

Mailchimp has released a guide to spam lawsuits with advice on how to not be a target.
I had the pleasure of meeting some of the Mailchimp legal staff last year when I was down there to do on-site training for their abuse desk employees. I was quite impressed with them and their understanding of privacy and email issues.

May 23, 2011

Further amendment would be futile

By laura

4 Min read

10 comments

23May

Both Microsoft and Yahoo filed their motions to dismiss the Holomaxx first amended complaint (FAC). Each company filed the same set of documents. Motion to dismiss (Microsoft, Yahoo) A comparison of the original complaint and the first amended complaint (Microsoft redline, Yahoo Redline) A request for judicial notice of the MAAWG Abuse Desk Common Practices document. The motions to dismiss the...

May 18, 2011

Another kind of email breach

By laura

4 Min read

6 comments

18May

In all the recent discussions of email address thievery I’ve not seen anyone mention stealing addresses by abusing the legal system. And, yet, there’s at least one ambulance chasing lawyer that’s using email addresses that were never given to him by the recipients. Even worse, when asked about it he said that the courts told him he could use the email address and that we...

April 27, 2011

Auto-acks don't create a contract

By laura

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27April

From Eric Goldman’s blog Acknowledging Receipt of an Email Doesn’t Form a Contract–Stebbins v. Wal-Mart. I know a number of people who have tried the “if you do X, we will have a contract” trick and it’s nice to see the courts pointing out how silly this is.