Trouble Brewing for Kraft and Gevalia over Coffee Spam

FOSTER CITY, Calif. -- April 18, 2005 A federal lawsuit alleging violations of federal and California anti-spam email laws was filed today in U.S. District Court, Northern District, in San Francisco against Illinois-based Kraft Foods, Inc. (NYSE: KFT) and its New Jersey-based subsidiary Victor Th. Engwall & Co., for using illegal spam to advertise Gevalia coffee.

The complaint demands a jury trial and seeks statutory and liquidated damages that could exceed $11.7 million.

More news, as it brews; updates will be posted below.

• The complaint as filed U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, Case No. C 05-01589 PJH, under Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton:
  In HTML format; In Microsoft Word format; In PDF format; In RTF format.
  Exhibits: #1, #2, #3
• Case Updates:
  • 2005-04-21: Gevalia spam continues to arrive even after this lawsuit was filed
  • 2005-08-29: And more Gevalia spam continues to arrive (1, 2) with headers that contain fraudulently registered domain names. As can be seen in these newest emails, Gevalia still uses companies listed in Spamhaus, e.g.: "Partners-In-Spam: Vayan Marketing Group, LLC"
  • 2006-02-09: More and more illegal Gevalia spam continues to be sent to Hypertouch's servers, some even from the same IP addresses that were sending spam a year ago. The total maximum damages now exceed $13 million dollars.
  • 2006-03-14: The law firms of Walton & Roess and Chadbourne and Parke replace Fallat as attorneys for Hypertouch.
• Press:
  • InternetNews, PowerPage, MSNBC
  • Nearly a year after the filing of this suit, Gevalia is still providing the email addresses of opt-out request to spammers (InternetNews.com).
• Other interesting documents, but not part of the case:
  • Sample of Gevalia spam sent to Hotmail email addresses that had hidden text copied from the web pages of ABCNews.com.
  • L. L. Bean's 2004 suit against Gevalia for "parasitic placement of pop'up advertisements on L. L. Bean’s web site through the use of spyware"
• Filed documents from PACER case docket.
• Court dates:

  04/18/2005	Complaint filed
  06/02/2005	Answers filed by Kraft and Victor Th. Engwall
  08/18/2005	Case Management Conference in Courtroom 3 17th Flr at 2:30 PM
  08/19/05	Mediation within 180 days
  08/26/05	Mediator John A. Skelton of the Litigation Solutions Law Group appointed
  05/17/06	Non-Expert Discovery cutoff
  08/23/06	Expert disclosure
  09/27/06	Expert discovery cutoff
  07/12/06	Dispositive Motions heard
  10/12/06	Pretrial Conference
  11/6/06	Trial: at 8:30 a.m., for 8 days, by Jury