DoubleClick in court over pop-ups

Those annoying pop-ups with fake user interfaces that mimic Microsoft operating system error messages are getting Doubleclick into trouble.
Ference & Associates are trying to win $5 for each computer warning ad served by Doubleclick.com.

The suit accuses the New York-based company of deceptive business practices and fraud. No court date has been set yet, Nj newsflash has the full story.

A nationwide class action lawsuit was filed on July 11, 2003, in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, against DoubleClick Inc., by Ference & Associates and Malone, Larchuk & Middleman, P.C. DoubleClick is a leading provider of products and services used by direct marketers, web publishers and advertisers to plan, execute and analyze marketing programs. DoubleClick served more than 630 billion Internet advertisements for thousands of clients in 2002.
The class action complaint alleges that DoubleClick deceptively and fraudulently commandeered millions of Internet users to the commercial websites of DoubleClick's customers through dissemination of tens-of-millions of fraudulent Internet advertising banners that impersonated computer error messages.
The Complaint states that through use of such Fake User Interface ("FUI") dialogs that gave the false appearance of being computer error messages, DoubleClick tricked millions of Internet users into interrupting the work they were performing to respond to the fraudulent error message, only to unexpectedly find both computer and computer user thus hijacked to the commercial websites of DoubleClick's customers. Read the Complaint here.

The Complaint also states that DoubleClick advertises its ad management technology is protected by U.S. Patent No. 5,948,061. This Patent provides an explanation of how DoubleClick's ad management technology works. Read the Patent here - 924 KB / 12 pages.