• by Ray Schultz , August 3, 2020

DatabaseUSA, a provider of data and email marketing services, has won a victory over The Spamhaus Project.

A federal court found that Spamhaus defamed the company and interfered with its business relations by “wrongfully listing DatabaseUSA.com on Spamhaus’s domain block list from 2017 to the present.” 

DatabaseUSA suffered “damage to its reputation, a loss of customers, and loss of potential revenue as a result of Spamhaus’s defamation and tortious interference,” wrote Senior U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Bataillon in an opinion on file with the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska. 

DatabaseUSA, which is now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, sought $1 in damages. However, Bataillon wrote in an analysis that “DatabaseUSA has demonstrated an irreparable injury.”

Bataillon ordered Spamhaus to publish a statement on its website saying that “DatabaseUSA.com LLC was wrongfully included on the blocklist from May 2017 until the date of this order.”

In addition, Bataillon ordered that if Database USA is included on the blocklist in the future, it shall “provide DatabaseUSA.com LLC with an explanation for doing so and an explanation as to how DatabaseUSA.com can be removed from the blocklist.” 

MediaPost was unable to get a comment from Spamhaus at deadline. 

Spamhaus blocks domains of firms that send phishing and scam emails, malware and viruses, but DatabaseUSA argued in its complaint filed last year that it has “never partaken of the prohibited actions.”

The company was removed from the blocklist briefly in 2017, then placed back on it, the complaint states. 

The company hailed the victory in the Spamhaus case. 

“We are very pleased with the Court’s actions this week,” said Fred Vakili, DatabaseUSA CEO. 

Vakili adds that “Spamhaus’ arbitrary and unresponsive practices have created an unfair and hostile business environment. Their actions have, at times, even blocked our ability to do business with our own customers.”

Earlier this spring, The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld an $11.2 million judgment against DatabaseUSA for allegedly copying the Infogroup database.