Chris Faulkner, CEO of CI Host, which filed the lawsuit in August, claimed that AOL is in settlement talks with his firm.
CI Host, a Dallas company that hosts Web sites and sends e-mail on behalf of its 200,000 customers said that on Aug. 12, AOL blocked the IP addresses of its servers.
“We host 15 million e-mail accounts,” said Faulkner. “Many of them use AOL dial up, and none of them could contact companies that use AOL.”
AOL did not return a call for comment by press time. Nicholas Graham, AOL spokesman, has said in other reports that the allegations made in the lawsuit are without merit.
“The [blockage] came out of the blue — we got no faxes, no warning, no phone calls, and they will not say why they did this,” Faulkner said.
Faulker alleged: “When our customers would e-mail through AOL, the e-mails would bounce back and the message would say, ‘this e-mail is coming from a spammer. AOL has determined that the e-mail server you are sending this e-mail from is blacklisted for sending excessive spam.'”
Faulkner filed the lawsuit in the state court in the District Court of Tarrant County, Texas on Aug. 18 claiming unfair competition, violations of the trademark law, interference with contractual rights and unfair methods of competition. Damages requested are in excess of $15 million, but Faulkner said he is still evaluating the damage to his clients.
CI Host also filed a temporary restraining order asking that the blocks be opened. A state judge granted the restraining order on Aug. 21.
But Faulkner claimed that AOL refused to comply for 10 days.
“On day 11, they unblocked the IP addresses of our servers, but the next day, they blocked our servers again,” Faulkner said. “And then their general counsel called and said that an automated system was blocking this and they couldn’t do anything about it,” Faulkner said.
CI Host filed a motion for contempt on Sept. 1 because AOL failed to unblock the IPs in a timely manner, Faulkner said.
Finally, he said, the IPs were unblocked.
The case has since been moved to federal court.
Faulkner said he does not plan to settle with AOL. “I am not afraid,” he said. “They are a giant and they have a lot of money, but I am big and have a lot of money, too. We had 200,000 customers screaming at us and we have to take care of them. If I take this lying down, I’m going to lose those customers in an industry that has 15,000 Web server companies competing against us.”
Network
