The case goes back to efforts by the University of Texas in 2003 to block nearly 60,000 emails sent to its students by the online dating service LonghornSingles.com, which is owned by Austin-based White Buffalo Ventures and developed specifically to target U of T students.
Attorneys for WBV argued that because the company had complied with all anti-spam laws, the university had violated the company’s constitutional rights by blocking emails that advertised its dating service.
In August 2005, a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel had ruled that Can-Spam did not supercede a university’s own email policy, even though WBV had originally obtained the student email addresses legally and directly from the university.
According to court documents from the original trial obtained by XBiz, the university said several students complained about the unsolicited emails soon after the service launched. The issue was compounded, university attorneys argued, when overall spam intake at the university began to crash the school’s computer systems.
Calls by XBiz to WBV were not answered by press time.