I'll research this company before writing the profile.
Overview. emaildirect inc. was a private, venture-backed digital direct marketing firm founded around 1998 by Gary and Sheri Brooks. Its headquarters were in Aliso Viejo, California; later listings show a Rancho Cordova/Sacramento-area address. CB Insights records roughly $710K raised across three rounds (Series A and B in 1999) and an asset acquisition on 19 February 2015, when j2 Global's Campaigner email-marketing brand bought the assets of "EmailDirect, a California-based provider of email marketing services." Available public sources do not clearly confirm the Sacramento-area EmailDirect acquired in 2015 is the same legal entity as the Aliso Viejo emaildirect sued in 2000; treat that continuity as likely but unverified. No verified employee count or revenue figures are publicly supported.
Operations. The company sold opt-in (subscription-based) email advertising. Its flagship product, Value-mail, was a biweekly shared email bundling coupons and offers from national, regional and local advertisers to roughly 500,000–600,000 subscribers, redeemable online or printed for in-store use. It also offered one-to-one targeted email campaigns and later a pay-for-performance model charging per click-through or sign-up rather than per name mailed. Delivery was outsourced, for example to Exactis.com.
Litigation posture. An operating company, not an NPE or shell licensor. It appears once in our database, solely as a defendant (0 plaintiff cases, 1 defendant case): CoolSavings.com, Inc. v. emaildirect inc. (Value-mail), N.D. Ill. (Chicago) — the Northern District of Illinois, not a plaintiff-friendly Texas venue.
Case context. CoolSavings sued in 1999, alleging Value-mail infringed its electronic-certificate distribution patent (issued June 1998). The parties settled roughly 14 months later: emaildirect took a license, agreed not to challenge the patent's validity, and accepted a six-data-point limit on targeting; its president said the license cost nothing. CoolSavings filed nine similar suits against rivals including iVillage, CouponSurfer, Catalina Marketing and Planet U. Separately, emaildirect itself sued Exactis.com for $5.3 million over a delivery contract — not in our tracked data.
Sources: Chief Marketer, ClickZ/Adweek, E-Commerce Times, j2 Global press release (Feb 2015), CB Insights.