i'm taking a ride with my best friend...

The California Supreme Court has ruled that spammers cannot be sued under state law for trespass of chattel; computer servers are not real property for purposes of trespass law. How interesting! I always thought the trespass-of-chattel theory was an ingenious use of ancient common law to address a very modern problem. I guess the CA Supreme Court wasn't impressed. See the story here.

Arguments against the chattel theory point out that creating an absolute right to exclude would infringe on the ease and openness of communication. I think this is inapposite though, since harm to the chattel is required for a prima facie case. So simply sending one unwanted email would not create a cause of action.

However, the Court ruled that receiving the spam emails (6 emails to 35,000 Intel workers) did not damage Intel's computer servers. Hmmm...I smell appeal.