Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A court has thrown out a claim that a pop-up ad over the Internet violated state law.
Jesse Riddle sued Celebrity Cruises in 2002, claiming the company's pop-up ad violated Utah law against unsolicited commercial and sexually explicit e-mail.
The act requires senders of unsolicited e-mail ads to include identifying characteristics that allow recipients to delete them without opening them to see what they contain. Riddle argued that the definition of "e-mail" encompassed pop-up ads and made them subject to the same restrictions.
The court disagreed, however, saying pop-up ads are different from e-mails and are not sent to pre-defined destinations.
The Legislature repealed the e-mail act earlier this year after a federal statute superseded it. But the lawsuit continued because the alleged damage had already occurred.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
