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Intel e-mail case reaches high court in California

California's high court sought to clarify how trespass laws apply to the Internet as it heard arguments in Intel Corp's case against a former worker who sent mass e-mails through the company's servers.

Intel, the world's biggest chipmaker, sued engineer Ken Hamidi in 1998, claiming he trespassed on its property by sending up to 35,000 e-mails to employees criticizing the company's employment practices after he left the company. An appeals court agreed with a state court that prohibited Hamidi from sending unsolicited e-mails to Intel.

Hamidi appealed, saying he didn't set foot on Intel's property and sending e-mail isn't trespassing. The case is expected to define how far a law used to protect private property can be extended to a public forum like the Internet.

The trespass law "has remained the same for hundreds of years and here it has been adapted to a confusing and difficult forum," Hamidi's attorney, William McSwain, told the California Supreme Court. If the appeals court decision is allowed to stand, any form of electronic communication could be subject to the trespass law.

"You can't get a trespass injunction for an unwanted phone call," McSwain said.

Intel argued the e-mails burdened its e-mail servers and distracted employees.

"You have to imagine the swirl that takes place when these messages arrive," Intel's attorney, Michael Jacobs, told the court. "Someone gets it and takes it to his manager, who then asks his supervisor what to do about it. It's a mini-firestorm."

The court focused on how Hamidi's e-mails, which urged workers to change the company's employment practices by joining a group called FACE Intel or Former and Current Employees of Intel.

The justices asked McSwain what he considered the requirements for a trespass.

"Thirty thousand e-mails on an unsolicited basis," Chief Justice Ronald George said. "It's almost like dumping vitriol of a verbal nature."

McSwain told the court there has to be a "physical touching of chattel" and "an element of physical damage or impairment."

"It would be extremely rare for an e-mail to damage a computer," McSwain said.

Business groups, free-speech activists and labor organizers have filed more than a dozen advisory opinions in the case.

If companies can shut out e-mails, "Web sites or any device capable of receiving electronic signals suddenly becomes something that has an invisible fence around it," said Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group which supports Hamidi. "You cripple the Internet by creating all these fences."

Intel isn't trying to regulate anything that's in the public, argues Mark Theodore, an employment lawyer who filed a brief supporting Intel on behalf of the US Chamber of Commerce.

``Their server is connected to the Internet but they're not seeking to go beyond their servers,'' Theodore said.

Intel said it has never tried to stop Hamidi from exercising his free speech rights or organize a union and casts the case as a simple trespass.
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