Peer-to-peer technology company Altnet - which last month sent cease-and-desist letters to nine companies it suspected of infringing its patents - has agreed one of the companies was innocent.

Altnet claimed the companies had infringed its patents in the process of offering services to the music and movie industries in fighting piracy on peer-to-peer networks. One of the companies, BigChampagne, vigorously denied the accusations at the time. This week Altnet said it was satisfied that BigChampagne had not used its technology to assist the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in identifying people sharing files, who subsequently were sued for alleged copyright infringement.

RIAA has embarked on a strategy of suing individual filesharers in an attempt to reduce the level of music piracy occurring on peer-to-peer networks. Altnet believes that in order to identify filesharers RIAA partnered with companies which were using Altnet's technology without permission.

"After discussing the issue with BigChampagne and reviewing the facts they presented, Altnet apologises to BigChampagne for any miscommunication or false impression created by Altnet's press release that BigChampagne was engaged in any wrongful conduct. Clearly, it was not," said Derek Broes, executive vice president of worldwide operations for Altnet and Brilliant Digital.

However, Broes sticks to his guns, claiming that there are still eight firms who have been served notice and failed to respond or provide any evidence of non-infringement. "We will not permit companies to use Altnet's TrueNames file identifying technology to spoof, track or interdict files on file sharing networks without our permission," he said.

Yesterday Altnet sent Second Notice letters to the eight companies who had failed to respond, a spokesperson for the company told ZDNet Australia  .

"The letters request that the companies stop engaging in activities that Altnet believes constitute an infringement of Altnet's patent, or demonstrate to Altnet's satisfaction that they are not engaging in activities that constitute an infringement on Altnet's patent, by a specified date," said the spokesperson. "The date specified in the letters is December 29, 2003. If they do not respond adequately by that date, Altnet may at that point choose to file a legal complaint in court."

The eight firms still under notice from Altnet are BayTSP, Cyveillance, Media Defender, Media Sentry, NetPD, Inc., Overpeer, Inc., Ranger Online and Vidius.

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