Zone Labs has announced that online advertising software purveyor 180Solutions has voluntarily dismissed a lawsuit filed in November 2005 against the Internet security company.

The suit sought to force Zone Labs to alter the way its ZoneAlarm software labeled technologies utilized by the Zango and 180Search Assistant programs. 180Solutions did not offer any reason for dismissing the suit in paperwork filed to the court, and there was no negotiated settlement. No changes were made to ZoneAlarm's software, its log ranking of the Global Windows Hook or the OSFirewall alert language as a result of the suit or specifically with regards to 180Solutions software.

"From the inception of the suit, we believed it had no merit," said John Slavitt, general counsel for Check Point Software Technologies, parent company of Zone Labs. "ZoneAlarm alerts are triggered by the behavior of a program, not its name. If the 180Solutions software exhibits suspicious behavior, we alert our customers accordingly. We did not make any concessions or reach a settlement after the suit was filed."

For example, if a customer downloads the 180Solutions' Zango program today, the following ZoneAlarm alert is shown to the user: "Zango is attempting to monitor user activities on your computer. If allowed it may try to track or log keystrokes (user input), mouse movements/clicks, Web sites visited, and other user behaviors."

"Our customers rely on ZoneAlarm to protect them while they innocently surf the Internet," said Laura Yecies, general manager of Zone Labs and vice president of Check Point. "Ultimately, all consumers must be able to choose what to allow on their PC and to understand the intent of the program. Zone Labs remains committed to innovating proactive protection to advance the safety of all consumers online."

[Without reading more into this than it can carry this is nevertheless interesting because it presumably means a set of sharp legal brains have examined this suit and found it wanting. Anti-malware companies should be allowed to correctly label spyware and other malware types for what they are and let users decide whether or not they want them, without danger of having to face expensive law suits. --Ed].

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