In this case, the court held that defendants' unauthorized mailing of unsolicited bulk e-mail constituted a trespass to chattels under Virginia state law.

[1] The court also found that the defendant diluted AOL's trademark and service mark in violation of Lanham Act.

[1] AOL is one of the largest online service providers in the United States who had 10 million members at the time when this lawsuit was filed.

Besides, their e-mail addresses were readily available by either plucking them off the service themselves, or buying one of the many lists of AOL members being sold.

[3] In the late 1997 and early 1998, AOL filed a series of lawsuits against a dozen of spammers, including Over The Air Equipment [3], IMS[2], Squeaky Clean Marketing and Cyber Services [3], Prime Data Worldnet Systems [4][5], LCGM Incorporated [6], Web Promo Incorporated [6], and so on[7] .

After being notified in writing by AOL to cease and desist, Melle continued his practice of sending unauthorized bulk e-mail.

His activities caused AOL to spend technical resources and staff time to "defend" its computer system and its membership against this spam.

Compuserve received complaints from subscribers and the defendant, Cyber Promotion, did not stop sending message even after it was notified that the bulk e-mails was unauthorized.

Furthermore, because the trespass law of Virginia was very close to that of Ohio, the court decided to rely on the reasoning of Compuserve.

§ 1125(a)(1), in order to establish a false-designation violation under the Lanham Act, the plaintiff must show: (1) the alleged violator must employ a false designation; (2) the false designation must deceive as to origin, ownership or sponsorship; and (3) the plaintiff must believe that "he or she is or is likely to be damaged by such an act."

[1] The court held that Melle diluted AOL’s trademark and service mark in violation of the Lanham Act.

Generally, courts were sympathetic to AOL and other online service providers' effort to fight against spam.

[9] On the other hand, even if courts ruled in favor of AOL at most times, the problem was that even as some junk emailers were kicked out of the game, others would jump into the business very soon, because there were few barriers to entry.

[10][11][12][13][14] In the academic community, there were also heated debate on whether courts should apply the century-old doctrine of trespass to chattels to the Internet in order to save online service providers from junk e-mail.