The California Supreme Court ruled that sending unsolicited e-mails to a company’s employees can’t be considered trespassing. The court overturned a lower court’s injunction that banned Ken Hamidi, a former employee of Intel, from sending a barrage of e-mails to his former co-workers at Intel.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court rejected Intel’s argument that the e-mails represented illegal trespassing on its computer network.

“The court understood that this case is about communication,” said Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a friend of the court brief on Hamidi’s behalf. “If the decision had gone the other way, the Internet’s fundamental structure — where everyone is connected to everyone — would have been compromised. It would have Balkanized the Internet.”

Hamidi, who believes Intel unfairly fired him, sent a series of scornful e-mails to more than 30,000 Intel employees over a two-year period about the company’s employment practices.

In 1998, Intel received an injunction barring Mr. Hamidi from sending more e-mails to Intel employees, claiming Hamidi’s actions disrupted employees’ and forced the IT department to spend hours trying to block his e-mails.

Wired News reported that, “the state Supreme Court rejected the appeals court’s reasoning, saying that Hamidi’s e-mails weren’t trespassing since they didn’t actually disrupt Intel’s servers.”

“Hamidi did nothing but use the e-mail system for its intended purpose — to communicate with employees,” declared the court. “The system worked as designed, delivering the messages without any physical or functional harm or disruption. These occasional transmissions cannot reasonably be viewed as impairing the quality or value of Intel’s computer system.”.

(via Wired News)