Anti-Spammer Loses Court Battle - Must Pay Spammers

from the bad-legal-precedent dept

There are more and more stories coming out of Washington state these days as people there use the state's anti-spam laws to successfully sue spammers for about $500 for each message. However, some of those lawsuits may be put on hold after one anti-spammer had his case rejected and was told to pay the lawyer fees of the spammer. What's odd is that no clear reason was given for why the case was thrown out, and why the anti-spammer needs to pay. His response is that he simply won't pay, and will refile the case in another court. I would think it makes more sense to appeal it, rather than to ignore and refile...
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  • identicon
    Anonymoose, 14 Aug 2002 @ 11:42am

    No Subject Given

    Dumb question for any legal eagles reading this:

    If the name of my company is copyrighted, and someone puts it on a mailing list without my permission, then sells it to a spammer, aren't they violating copyright law by illegally selling copyrighted material? Aren't the spammers violating copyright law by using copyrighted material for commercial purposes?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      LittleW0lf, 14 Aug 2002 @ 4:20pm

      Re: No Subject Given

      A company name cannot be copyrighted, only trademarked. You could probably sue them for trademark violations, but not for copyright violations.

      However, I am not a legal eagle, and I'm sure there may be exceptions to the rule.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      dr_stein, 14 Aug 2002 @ 4:54pm

      Re: No Subject Given

      I wonder if you could get them for trademark dilution?

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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