LICRA v. Yahoo! - Proceedings in the United States

On 2001-01-10 Yahoo announced that it would not appeal against the ruling in France. It decided to take the case before a United States District Court in San Jose, California, asking it to find that the French ordinance is not effective in the United States. Judge Jeremy Fogel found the decision returned by the tribunal de grande instance of Paris to be inconsistent with the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, relating to freedom of expression, and that consequently it is inapplicable in the United States.

The LICRA and the UEJF appealed the decision before the U.S. Court of Appeals (9th Circuit) for the State of California, who had the responsibility of determining whether France had jurisdiction. The Appeals Court accepted the case and, on August 23, 2004, reversed the earlier finding, arguing that the defendents had acted only with regard to transactions taking place in France as part of Yahoo!'s international business, and that this subjected Yahoo! to French juridiction:

Exercise of jurisdiction is consistent with these requirements of "minimum contacts" and "fair play and substantial justice" where (1) the non-resident defendant has purposefully directed his activities or consummated some transaction with the forum or a resident thereof, or performed some act by which he purposefully availed himself of the privileges of conducting activities in the forum, thereby invoking the benefits and protections of its laws; (2) the claim arises out of or relates to the defendant’s forum-related activities; and (3) the exercise of jurisdiction is reasonable.

There was one dissenting opinion, written by Judge Melvin Brunetti, who argued that "a defendant’s intentional targeting of his actions at the plaintiff in the forum state", which he viewed the French charges and fines as constituting, sufficed to give jurisdiction to the forum state, the United States, under the Supreme Court's "express aiming" precedent.

The case created a media response and sparked a backlash of controversy in the United States, where many saw it as the censoring of a United States publication by a foreign power. Although technically the decision only required Yahoo! to prevent the sale of Nazi objects to people in France, in practice technical limitations make it infeasible to track the geographical location of a customer on the web. The practical consequence was that Yahoo! was forced to monitor and remove any and all such items from its website, at considerable expense to itself, and render appropriate payment of fines to France.

On 2006-01-12, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit delivered a judgment reversing the judgment of the District Court and remanded the case with directions to dismiss the action. Judge William Fletcher noted that:

Yahoo! is necessarily arguing that it has a First Amendment right to violate French criminal law and to facilitate the violation of French criminal law by others. [...] the extent — indeed the very existence — of such an extraterritorial right under the First Amendment is uncertain.

On 30 May 2006 the Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.