It's not just Internet users who are up in arms over the spread of pop-up ads.

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L.L. Bean is filing lawsuits against Nordstrom and three other companies over such ads. It claims the companies used pop-up ads that showed up on the screen when some customers visited the L.L. Bean site.

An e-commerce official at L.L. Bean said that when the companies place ads that appear when people surf the Bean site, it is trading on the company name and infringing on its trademark rights.

In addition to Nordstrom, the companies being sued include J.C. Penney, Atkins and Gevalia.

Those companies had a deal with a software company that creates ads that track online habits and push pop-up ads on the screen when a web browser points to certain sites.

Software that watches what a user does and provides supposedly relevant ads or sends information back to a company is sometimes called spyware.