San Francisco, July 02: The California Supreme Court on Monday ruled spammers cannot be sued under state law for property trespass for just sending e-mail -- a setback for Intel Corp. -- which had sued a former engineer for sending e-mails to up to 35,000 company workers. The 4-3 ruling reversed a lower court order prohibiting former Intel engineer Ken Hamidi from sending e-mails critical of Intel to thousands of its employees.
Intel claimed the e-mails had trespassed on its private network and had harmed the company by reducing worker productivity.
But the California Supreme Court found that Intel's computer system had not been damaged as a result of the e-mails and, therefore, there was no trespass.
The court declined to expand state common law covering property trespass to apply to e-mail whose contents may be objectionable, but which is otherwise harmless. Bureau Report