Intel Corporation v. Hamidi

Facts

Intel Corporation, Plaintiff, provides an electronic mail (email) system for its employees. Plaintiff permits its employees to have “reasonable non-business use” of the emails. In six separate incidents over two years, Kourosh Kenneth Hamidi, Defendant, Plaintiff’s former employee, sent mass emails to about 35,000 of Plaintiff’s current employees at a time. Defendant’s communications to the Plaintiff’s employees were vital to Plaintiff’s employment practices. Defendant would provide Plaintiff’s employees with the chance of opting out of receiving his emails if they wanted to. Plaintiff’s employees, who received the emails, would discuss the emails’ content among other employees and managers. Besides such actions, Defendants emails did not cause any other disruption to Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s computers. Multiple times, Plaintiff asked Defendant to stop using its equipment to send messages. Plaintiff brought suit against Defendant and asserted a trespass to chattels claim. Plaintiff motioned for summary judgement, and the trial court granted the motion and issued an injunction preventing Defendant from sending emails to Plaintiff’s employees through Plaintiff’s email system. The appellate court affirmed, and Defendant appealed.