ATLANTA (CN) — A false advertising lawsuit filed by a cybersecurity competitor against Microsoft should have been tossed out by a Florida federal judge for failing to back up its claims with proof, a unanimous panel of the 11th Circuit ruled on Tuesday.
The Atlanta-based appeals court decided that it lacked jurisdiction over the case filed by TocMail Inc. concerning allegedly false statements made by Microsoft in the advertising and promotion of its Safe Links software.
TocMail claimed in a February 2020 lawsuit that Microsoft misled the public into believing that its product offered effective protection from a cybersecurity threat known as IP evasion.
The Florida-based company alleged that it offered the “only time-of-click redirection service immune to [IP evasion] attack” and that Microsoft’s “deception” kept it from breaking it into the market, causing TocMail to lose out on millions of customers and $43 billion in profits.
Although a Florida federal judge ruled in December 2021 that no reasonable jury could find that Microsoft’s ads were misleading, the 11th Circuit’s decision cuts deeper.
TocMail has not presented any evidence which would allow a jury to find that it suffered any injury due to Microsoft’s allegedly false advertising or that TocMail would have ever sold anything to any consumer, the unsigned per curiam opinion says.
“The evidence suggests that TocMail wasn’t harmed at all,” the panel’s ruling states. “All TocMail needed was some evidence that it...
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