Ken Magill reports:

Contrary to reports circulating among anti-spammers, e360 Insight’s chief executive Dave Linhardt claims he has not dropped his lawsuit against members of the Nanae online discussion group.

According to Linhardt, he’s simply switching venues.

“We discovered that one of the vigilantes lives in Illinois,” he said in an e-mail exchange with this publication earlier today. “Therefore, we are required to file in state court.  So we removed our initial filing in federal court and are re-filing in state court.”

Apparently, no one showed up from either side of the dispute in federal court yesterday and Linhardt’s lawyers called to say they were withdrawing.

Linhardt said he plans to re-file the same suit against all the original defendants in state court, and add one more: Bill Silverstein, an anti-spammer who sued Linhardt in California last month in retaliation for the e-mail marketer’s original suit against members of Nanae.

Seems like an odd strategy, but that's just me . . . .