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The defendants are accused of waging an internet campaign against Sorrell.

Peter Sommer was giving evidence in support of the advertising tycoon's action for libel and breach of privacy against Italian media company, FullSix Spa, its founder Marco Benatti and his "lieutenant", chief executive Marco Tinelli.

Sorrell, the 62-year-old chief executive of WPP, has accused them of disseminating blogs alleging criminal activity and money laundering, sending out a "vicious" Jpeg image of himself and executive Daniela Weber, and of labelling them "the mad dwarf and the nympho schizo".

Weber, chief operating officer of WPP Italy, is also suing for breach of privacy.

Their counsel, Desmond Browne QC, told Mr Justice Eady, who is hearing the case in London without a jury, that there was "overwhelming" forensic evidence against Benatti and Tinelli.

He branded a defence concession, last month, that an employee of FullSix -- not Benatti or Tinelli -- might have been involved in the dissemination of the Jpeg email and the libellous blogs last March as "weasel words".

The case concerned the aftermath of a broken close friendship between Benatti and Weber and of Sorrell's termination of Benatti's consultancy role and position as country manager for WPP Italy.

In his evidence, Sommer, a senior research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that they sought to make their case that the defendants were responsible for last year's successive blogs and emails with offensive attachments "by a series of inferences".

Turning to the skills needed to conceal authorship of blogs and emails, Sommer said that none of the techniques required what might be called "geek" skills.

Although they might sound complicated in practice, the only skill was learning that they existed and could be used.

He said that he had already formed this view before the late discovery of the trace of the 'Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber Dissidents' on Tinelli's computer.

The book contained detailed instructions, which matched very closely the methods used to conceal publication of the blogs and emails in the case.

In relation to Tinelli's assertions about his level of skill in IT matters and his use of USB sticks, Sommer noted that while still an undergraduate, Tinelli ran a service on the French Minitel service, which he described as a predecessor of the internet.

Sommer said that Tinelli downplayed his skills and said that he had no specific IT training or qualifications and a limited usage of USB sticks.

Tinelli himself had suggested that third parties might have had limited access to his laptop -- but said he would be surprised if they had.

Sommer said that it seemed to him that one could not be a successful publisher in new emerging electronic media without having lively interest in the related emergent technologies.

"He says he has no formal IT training but a great deal of practical knowledge and skill can be acquired simply 'on the job'."

Sommer said that what he had seen indicated that Tinelli had a "long-term interest in blogsites".

He questioned the defence explanation that there were no internet history records on Tinelli's laptop because the limited size of the cache meant it was deleted on a session-by-session basis.

"In my experience, the main situations in which session-by-session deleting takes place is where there are publicly accessible PCs, as in an internet cafe, college or library.

"But Tinelli is using a small laptop and the only other explanation for session-by-session deleting seems to be a fear of post-event forensic examination."

He believed that Tinelli needed to explain the circumstances in March 2006 in which he visited the Yahoo.fr website, which might have some bearing on the creation of the email account later used to initiate the distribution of the Jpeg, and how certain addresses appeared as "contacts" in his Outlook Express files when he said he never replied to any emails from those sources.

He said: "It is impossible wholly to deny the possibility that a third party used Tinelli's laptop computer at various times. But it seems relatively unlikely."

He added that it was now clear and apparently admitted that that the perpetrator(s) operated from within FullSix's computer facilities infrastructure.

"It surely cannot be difficult for the defendants to produce a list of potential suspects in terms of access to their facilities and coincidences of times.

"At no stage have I been made aware of any such alternative candidates."

The defendants, who deny libel and breach of privacy, do not seek to justify the libels but deny that they were responsible for disseminating them or the privacy-infringing emails.

The hearing was adjourned until tomorrow when counsel for the defence will open their case.