Hey guys, I am currently a second year law student, who is interested in practicing internet law. With that in mind, any information I provide should not and can not be taken as legal advice. Below are some of my notes from civil procedure regarding internet jurisdiction. This may be handy for everyone that owns or operates a website. Zippo Manufacturing Co. v. Zippo Dot Com, Inc - Manufacturing (P) produced Zippo lighters – Dot Com operated a website and news service and obtained exclusive right to Zippo domain names. 1. Issue: Whether D’s conducting of electronic commerce w/PA residents constitutes purposeful availment of doing business in PA. 2. Rule: The exercise of jurisdiction is determined by examining the level of interactivity and commercial nature of the exchange of information that occurs on the website. 3.Scale of Interactivity (inset – outer limit of PJ toll free number) Okay, sorry class is starting. I will respond with an explanation of this after.
Okay, so to explain that chart a bit more. (Granted it has been over a year since I read or looked at this stuff, but I figured I should contribute to DP in some way.) The Zippo case helps establish personal jurisdiction for websites. By looking at the "level of interactivity" and commercial nature of the website, the court can determine if a party purposely availed themselves enough to say that personal jurisdiction has been established. We created a similar chart to the one above in order to help us determine the level of interactivity. In summary, the Inset case is the outer limit to easily establish personal jurisdiction. The Inset website contained a toll free number, which anyone from any state could contact and had over 10,000 users. Thus, the court determined that personal jurisdiction was established because the owner of the website purposely availed their self to its customers. Conversely, a purely informational site, or a website which simply allows people to login and post (such as, forums) will not be considered to have established personal jurisdiction. Though, I believe most of this could be avoided if your "terms of use" expressly established jurisdiction. To be continued... once I refresh up on more of this.
Sorry, three weeks of this semester left means not much time on the side. I promise to get to a longer explanation than what I have provided.
i too am tremendously excited by this. what about subdomains and trademark, now that im talking to a lawyer, are we also screwed if we name a subdomain by a trademarked term?
1. Personal jurisdiction is one thing and generally TOS say where jurisdiction is. However, in practice those are going to be somewhat disregarded if the entity is non-US because there is a whole line of cases saying that people that do business with US consumers are subject to the jurisdiction of US courts unless you put barriers to US usage like some of the gaming sites do. 2. With many internet related issues you can get them thrown into federal court as a defendant and then the jurisdiction is not nearly as important. 3. Never use trademarked items anywhere.
not even in text, wow you lawyers are scumbaggish lately? what about in subdirectories? and in titles? what about if the permalink structure has the subdirectory folder follow the title name? u sure we cant put it in a subdomain? there been any precedents on subdomains and subdirectories getting taken to court?
You're never going to get free legal research anywhere. The point is not whether it's been take to court anyway, the point is whether it is right. You certainly don't want to be the first one. And as these things play out the big guys go after the little guys to make precedent because that way it goes in their favor. Do you have the money to fight a big boy? Nope. They will win their precedent for virtually nothing...after they bury you in paper and make your life a living hell. Of course you can use a trademarked name in fair use. No way to tell if your use is fair use from what you say. If you have specific questions about what you are doing you should hire a lawyer to review your specific details.
whose point? since when does a corrupt justice system have anything to do with wrong or right? u do realise this is like stalins show trials, dont you what are you anyways, another vampire lawyer you too? you havent answered my question, where can the word 'SONY' be used in a review with an affiliate link? In the text, not possible, since it's being sold? In the title? And yet the title goes to the subdirectory title name.. should we change our permalinks to something neutered? MY QUESTION IS THIS: are there any precedents for subdomain brandgrubbery
Dude I'm done with the trademark discussion. It's off-topic of this thread. No lawyer is going to give you a specific legal opinion for free. That's how lawyers lose get sued for malpractice. If you don't like what I said then ignore it. No worries, but don't insult me.
my question isnt any more specific than the topic of this thread! i didnt insult you, just the lawyers! ^_^
Understand the Zippo test and the sliding spectrum Shaanta, but there is also the 'effects' doctrine. There have been wildly divergent results in applying the Zippo test because different jurisdictions reach different findings based on similar facts. Some courts have been prepared to find (applying the Zippo interactivity test) that the mere availability of a defendants website in one US state made it apparent that its services were used by the residents in another US state. Under the Zippo doctrine a passive website is not supposed to establish specific jurisdiction. In many European cases this is precisely what has happened. Websites have been found to have been reaching out to another jurisdiction with no degree of interactivity. Certainly in tort cases such as defamation the effects doctrine is used (eg Dow Jones v Guttnick) The cases are hard to reconcile.
Terri Wells v Playboy - trade marks in meta tags, texts and watermarks on page keywords - in some cases in some jurisdictions. Nominative fair use saved her as she was Playboy of the Year in 19XX (whatever). Didn't stop them trying to sue her for trademark infringement. - product displayed on a webpage - Ward Group v Brodie Stone The world has gone mad.
Yeah, I just wish they would keep that crap in general chat where it fits with most of the other posts. This member has tons of spam posted in the legal section which usually stays fairly clean.