Microsoft owns and runs Hotmail, a free, web based email service. It sought a summary judgment from the English courts to stop McDonald from operating his Bizads business, which offered for sale lists of email addresses of people which were used as the basis of spam by those who purchased the lists.

Microsoft said that the activity breached the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations. It argued that because a high proportion of the people receiving the emails complained about them it was suffering loss and damage to the goodwill it had as operators of Hotmail.

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