Personal Jurisdiction for Online Activities and International Jurisdiction

Scope

• Use this page to list sources related to questions about what online activities may subject one to the jurisdiction of a given court, or other jurisdictional conflicts that arise online.

News / Editorial

• Nate Anderson, P2P defendants demand legal fees from Far Cry filmmaker, Ars Technica (Sep. 16, 2010).
• Eric Pfanner, British Put Teeth in Anti-Piracy Proposal, NY Times (Mar. 14, 2010).
• Amy E. Bivins, Posting Allegedly Defamatory Online Article Did Not Target State Where Subject Located , Electronic Commerce & Law Report (Mar. 3, 2010).
• Mark Fass, In Dispute Over Disassembled Camaro, Court Finds Personal Jurisdiction but Not From 'Passive' Web Site , Law.com (Feb. 17, 2010).
• Arthur Bright, Fortress Iceland? Probably Not. , Citizen Media Law Project (Feb. 16, 2010).
• Keith Bradsher, China Announces Arrests in Hacking Crackdown, The New York Times (Feb. 8, 2010).
• Paul Freehling, First Circuit Court of Appeals Liberally Construes Personal Jurisdiction, Leading to 1.16 Million Dollar Verdict, Trading Secrets: A Law Blog on Trade Secrets, Non-Competes, and Computer Fraud (Jan. 4, 2010).
• Patrick McGroarty, Germany calls for ban of neo-Nazi sites abroad, Sydney Morning Herald (Jul. 10, 2009).
• Robin Wauters, Yahoo Fined By Belgian Court For Refusing To Give Up E-Mail Account Info, TechCrunch (Mar. 2, 2009).
• Marcia Coyle, Kentucky Domain Name Suit Has Web World Buzzing, The National Law Journal (Feb. 4, 2009).
• Jessica Noll, Ky. Seizes Domain Names Of Web Gambling Sites, KYPost.com (Sep. 23, 2008).
• Ben Elgin and Bruce Einhorn, The Great Firewall of China, BusinessWeek (Jan. 12, 2006).
• Reporters Without Borders, Do Internet companies need to be regulated to ensure they respect free expression? (Jan. 6, 2006).
• Declan McCullagh, Has 'haven' for questionable sites sunk? CNET (Aug. 4, 2003).
• Ben Laurie, An Expert's Apology, 2000.

Legal Opinions / Briefs

• Circuit Courts
  • Tamburo v. Dworkin, No. 08-2406 (7th Cir. Apr. 8, 2010).
  • Cossaboon v. Maine Medical Center, No. 09-1550 (1st Cir. Mar. 25, 2010).
  • Riley v. Dozier Internet Law, PC, No. 09-1044 (4th Cir. Mar. 24, 2010).
  • Brayton Purcell LLP v. Recordon & Recordon, No. 07-15383, (9th Cir. Aug. 5, 2009) (verbatim copying of Plaintiff's website located in the Northern District of California permitted venue there despite all Defendant's business activities being located in the Southern District of California).
  • Dudnikov v. Chalk & Vermilion, 514 F.3d 1063 (10th Cir. 2008).
  • Boschetto v. Hansing, 539 F.3d 1011 (9th Cir. 2008).
  • Toys "R" Us, Inc., v. Step Two, S.A., 318 F.3d 446 (3d Cir. 2003),
  • Mink v. AAAA Development L.L.C., 190 F.3d 333 (5th Cir. 1999).
  • Bensusan Restaurant Corp. v. King, 126 F.3d 25 (2d Cir. 1997).
  • CompuServe, Inc. v. Patterson, 89 F.3d 1257 (6th Cir. 1996).

• District Courts
  • Buckles v. Brides Club, Inc., No. 08-00849 (D. Utah Aug. 11, 2010) (personal jurisdiction found where defendants set up fake blog and linkedin account regarding plaintiff, whom they knew lived in Utah).
  • Xcentric Ventures, LLC v. Bird, 2010 WL 447759 (D. Ariz. Feb. 3, 2010) (dismissing for lack of personal jurisdiction as under the Calder Effects Test "mere knowledge of an individual's residence, combined with intentional posting of defamatory statements on the internet (which, taken together, makes it foreseeable an individual will be harmed in a certain forum location) does not amount to 'express aiming.'").
  • uBID, Inc. v. The GoDaddy Group, Inc., No. 09-2123 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 5, 2009) (domain registrar not subject to personal jurisdiction in Illinois despite receiving 3.19% of its revenues from Illinois customers, among other Illinois contacts).
  • Royalty Network, Inc. v. Dishant.com, LLC, 638 F. Supp. 2d 410 (S.D.N.Y. 2009) (motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction granted where plaintiff merely alleged that website targeted Indian-American population and that 15% of said population lived in New York, without any other evidence of New York contacts).
  • Virgin Enterprises Limited v. Virgin Eyes, LLC., No. 08-8564 (S.D.N.Y. Sep. 30, 2009) (motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction granted where Defendant maintained a largely passive, semi-functional website focused on providing information about sunglasses, Google Sponsored Ads, some of which originated in New York, did not give rise to personal jurisdiction).
  • Mainstream Media EC v. Riven, No. 08-3623 (N.D. Cal. Jul. 17, 2009) (foreign defendant using yahoo.com email to purchase a stolen domain name registered with a California company using a California escrow company lacked sufficient minimum contacts with California for California to exercise specific personal jurisdiction).
  • Chloe v. Queen Bee of Beverly Hills, LLC, No. 06-03140, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55860, 2009 WL 1877332 (S.D.N.Y. Jun. 29, 2009) (addressing split over exercise of personal jurisdiction arising from a single internet-based sale to a New York plaintiff).
  • Penguin Group (USA) Inc. v. American Buddha, 90 U.S.P.Q.2d 1954 (S.D.N.Y. 2009).
  • The Am. Auto. Ass'n v. Darba Enters., 2009 WL 1066506 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 21, 2009).
  • CoStar Realty Information, Inc. v. Field, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32563, 2009 WL 841132 (D. Md. Mar. 31, 2009).
  • Societe des Bains de Mer v. MGM Mirage, No. 08-03157, 90 U.S.P.Q.2d 1028 (S.D.N.Y. 2008).
  • Facebook, Inc. v. ConnectU LLC, 07-01389 RS, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61962 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 13, 2007).
  • Bragg v. Linden Research, Inc., 487 F. Supp. 2d 593 (E.D.Penn. 2007).
  • Machulsky v. Hall, 210 F. Supp. 2d 531 (D.N.J. 2002).
  • Twentieth Cent. Fox Film Corp. v. iCraveTV, 53 U.S.P.Q.2d 1831 (W.D. Pa. 2000).
  • Hearst Corp. v. Goldberger, 96 Civ 3620, 1997 WL 97097, 1997 U.S. Dist. Lexis 2065 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 26, 1997).
  • Maritz, Inc. v. Cybergold, Inc., 947 F.Supp. 1328 (E.D. Mo. 1996).
  • Inset Systems, Inc. v. Instruction Set, 937 F.Supp. 161 (D. Conn. 1996).

• State Courts
  • Attaway v. Omega, 903 N.E.2d 73 (Ind. Ct. App. 2009).
  • Interactive Media Ent'mt and Gaming Ass'n, Inc. v. Wingate, 2009 WL 142995, (Ky. Ct. App. Jan. 20, 2009).
  • Sayeedi v. Walser, 835 N.Y.S.2d 840 (N.Y. City Civ. Ct. 2007).
  • Blakey v. Continental Airlines, 751 A.2d 538 (NJ 2000).
  • Pres-Kap, Inc. v. System One, Direct Access, Inc., 636 So.3d 1351 (Fla. App. 3 Dist. 1994).

• International
  • eBay Canada Ltd. v. Minister of National Revenue, 2008 FCA 348 (Nov. 7, 2008).
  • Dow Jones v. Gitnick, HCA 56 para 15 (10 Dec. 2002) (High Ct. Australia).
  • Richardson v. Schwarzenegger, 2004 EWHC 2422 (QB) (UK High Court of Justice Queen's Bench holding that Governor Schwarzenegger's campaign manager was subject to UK jurisdiction under the equivalent of an "effects test" for a comment he made in California to the Los Angeles Times that allegedly libeled a UK citizen).

Scholarship

• Marc H. Greenberg, A Return to Lilliput: The Licra v. Yahoo! Case and the Regulation of Online Content in the World Market, 18 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1191 (2003).
• Joel Reidenberg, The Yahoo Case and the International Democratization of the Internet, Fordham Law and Economics Research Paper No.11 (Apr. 2001).