Of note last week are three lawsuits.

1. Federal Trade Commission v. Phoenix Avatar, LLC doing business as Avatar Nutrition, DJL, LLC, Daniel J. Lin, Mark M. Sadek, James Lin, and Christopher M. Chung doing business as A I T Herbal Marketing
2. Federal Trade Commission v. Global Web Promotions Pty Ltd., Michael John Anthony Van Essen, and Lance Thomas Atkinson
3. OptInRealBig.com, LLC vs IronPort Systems, Inc. dba SpamCop.net, Inc.

The first two involve Federal Trade Commission enforcement of the criminal liability sections of the CAN SPAM Act of 2003. One of those involves an Australian company (Global Web Promotions) and seems to be intended to work along two main lines:

1. To cause the Defendant to stop order fulfillment; and
2. To cause the Defendant to return money for orders already fulfilled with regard to United States recipients.

There also seems to be some prompting that the FTC’s Australian counter-part investigate and prosecute. Well, okay, more than a little prompting.

The other FTC case is against a United States based group of spammers. If convicted on all counts they face fines measuring in the millions of dollars and up to twenty (20) years in prison.

The case that has the potential for the greatest impact is the one that is not FTC related. Scott Richter and his company, OptinRealBig.com, LLC, has sued IronPort Systems, Inc., alleging:

1. Tortious interference with contract;
2. Interference with contractual relationship;
3. Intentional interference with prospective economic advantage;
4. Negligent interference with prospective economic advantage;
5. Unfair competition, and;
6. Trade libel.

Some of the allegations are preposterous, and probably frivilous. For example, unfair competition? Neither SpamCop nor Ironport are in competition with OptInRealBig. OptIn sends email. Ironport/SpamCop provides information that helps ISPs decide about what email should be blocked.

Trade libel is also rather tenuous. This is the man who recently appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart declaring that he was a “high volume email deployer.” He’s also gotten his own ROKSO listing which only happens when someone has been kicked off of three different ISPs for spamming and he has been sued by the New York Attorney General and Microsoft for spamming.

If Scott Richter wins this suit, especially on the unfair competition and trade libel counts, then there is a definate possibility that there could be a chilling effect on companies providing such information.