05 September 2007, 13:45

Adware company Zango loses again in US court

Zango, an adware company, which was formerly known as 180solutions and subsequently merged with Hotbar to become Zango, has again lost an action against an anti-virus software company in a US court. The District Court of Washington in Seattle rejected the suit brought against Kaspersky Labs, in which Zango demanded that its adware be classified as non-threatening.

Back in June, the same judge, John C. Coughenour, rejected a similar suit against Australian anti-spyware company PC Tools. In that case, Zango was unable to demonstrate that the anti-spyware software was misleading users, since the software was being downloaded specifically in order to remove potentially malicious software. In the case of Kaspersky, under the Communications Decency Act, the anti-virus software provider cannot be held liable for classifying software as "potentially unwanted." The act states that no provider or user can be held liable for deliberate actions or actions taken in good faith which restrict access to material that the provider or user considers undesirable.

Zango has now withdrawn its failed action against PC Tools. PC Tools concludes from this that Zango does not intend to take any further legal steps against it. This new rejection of a Zango lawsuit will encourage the anti-virus software vendors. They had previously been forced by legal pressure from adware companies to introduce a "potentially unwanted software" category, rather than classifying adware applications as viruses. It seems, however, that adware companies will not succeed in pushing through any further demands.