For the first time ever, a federal judge in California ruled an Internet company without a physical address could be served court documents by e-mail.

The case stems from Las Vegas-based Rio All Suite Casino Resort hotel-casino, which tried for several years to sue Rio International Interlink (RII), the Costa Rican owners of Riosports.com and Betrio.com for violating some of its trademarks.

Usual legal protocol requires that legal documents, especially things like subpoenas and lawsuits, be served in person or mailed to an address. RIO said it reverted to e-mail after it tried every path possible, including international currier, to serve the initial complaint.

In a groundbreaking ruling, Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals U.S. District Judge Philip M. Pro supported RIO's plight.

"We acknowledge that we tread upon untrodden ground," said judge Pro. "When faced with an international e-business scofflaw playing hide-and-seek with the federal court, e-mail may be the only means of effecting service of process. Certainly in this case, it was a means reasonably calculated to apprise RII of the pendency of the lawsuit, and the Constitution requires nothing more."

RIO says it became aware of RII's existence by virtue of RII's advertisement in the Football Betting Guide`98 Preview. RIO later discovered, in the Nevada edition of the Daily Racing Form, another RII advertisement which invited customers to visit RII's website, Riosports.com. RII also ran radio spots in Las Vegas as part of its marketing strategy.

Upon learning of RII, RIO fired off an epistle demanding that RII cease and desist from operating the www.riosports.com website. Although RII did not formally respond, it promptly disabled the objectionable website. Apparently not ready to cash in its chips, RII soon activated the URL Betrio.com to host an identical sports gambling operation. Perturbed, RIO filed the present action alleging various trademark infringement claims and seeking to enjoin RII from the continued use of the name"RIO."

RIO eventually filed an emergency motion to contact RII through its e-mail address. RII opted not to respond to RIO's motion. The district court granted RIO's motion.

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While the ruling may be precedent setting, the trend of serving legal documents over the Internet may be a long time in coming.

"I would say in five to ten years that lawyers will still go through the tried and true methods of doing their jobs before reverting to using electronic methods like e-mail," said Ron Weikers, an attorney and co-author of an upcoming book Data Security & Privacy Law: Combating Cyber Threats.

Weikers says lawyers do use e-mail and FTP sites to file certain types of documents in their communication with the courts but major changes to legal procedures take much longer to establish.