Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme ET., LAntisemitisme (No. 00-21275 JF. June 7, 2001.) Facts: Yahoo!

is a corporation organized under the laws of Delaware with its principal place of business in Santa Clara, California. Yahoo! is an Internet service provider which operates various Internet web sites and services which end-users can access at the Uniform Resource Locater ("URL") "http://www.yahoo.com." The defendants are citizens of France who obtained order from French court requiring provider to block French citizens' access to Nazi material displayed or offered for sale on provider's site. Plaintiff filed this motion for declaratory relief in the United States District Court of Northern California against LICRA and UEJF to have the said order of the French court be declared unenforceable in U.S. The defendants moved for the dismissal of the action on the ground that the U.S. court lacked personal jurisdiction over them. Issue: Given the undisputed fact that neither LICRA nor UEJF regularly conducted business in the United States, the court has no basis for asserting general jurisdiction over them. The question should be: Does the U.S. Court have specific jurisdiction over the person of the defendants? Ruling: YES. The Court applied a three-part test to determine whether a court has grounds to exercise specific jurisdiction, which was complied in this case. The requisites are as follows: 1) The non-resident defendant must do some act or consummate some transaction within the forum by which the defendant purposely avails itself of the privilege of conducting activities in the forum, thus invoking the benefits and protection of its laws; 2) The claim must be one which arises out of or results from the defendants forum related activities; 3) The exercise of the courts jurisdiction must be reasonable. First requisite:

The purposeful availment requirement is intended to give notice to a nonresident that it is subject to suit in the forum state, thereby protecting it from being haled into local courts solely as the result of "random, fortuitous or attenuated" contacts over which it had no control. In the present case, the Court found that LICRA and UEJF had purposely availed themselves of the benefits of California. The Court based this holding on three contacts with the forum: (a) the cease and desist letter LICRA sent to Yahoo!,(b) the use of the US Marshals service to serve process and (c) LICRA and UEJFs request to the French court that Yahoo! perform certain acts on its server and remove certain Nazi item from its website in California. Second requisite: Applying a but for test, the Court found that but for the defendants having filed and prosecuted a lawsuit in France and having used the US Marshals Office to serve process, Yahoo would have had no need to file a declaratory relief seeking an order that the French decision is unenforceable in the United States. Third requisite: The exercise of jurisdiction was found to be reasonable since it comported with fair play and substantial justice.