MSN bears brunt of greeting card suit
A California judge orders Microsoft to use the front page of MSN to warn users that an antispam feature in its email software may discard e-greeting cards.
The order, made by Santa Clara County Superior Court judge Robert Baines, modified a previous ruling made in the same case, in which Boulder, Colorado-based Blue Mountain Arts claims that its online greeting card business is being undermined by a feature in the beta version of Microsoft's Outlook Express 5.0. Shortly after Microsoft entered the online greeting card space, Blue Mountain alleges, it added an antispam feature to the email software, causing messages generated by Blue Mountain to be placed in a junk mail folder.
Following the December 21 ruling requiring Microsoft to warn all Outlook Express users of the problem, Blue Mountain returned to court, complaining that the software giant had not posted the warning in the proper place. In a ruling issued Friday, Baines ordered Microsoft to place the warning on the front page of its heavily trafficked Microsoft Network.