Two Important Decisions by U.S. Appellate Courts on Internet Jurisdiction

There were two recent decisions released by U.S. Appellate Courts regarding jurisdiction online. In the first decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals (4th Cir) in ALS Scan v. Digital Service Consultants held that the District Court in Maryland could not exercise personal jurisdiction over an ISP based in Georgia in a copyright infringement case on the sole basis that the ISP provided web hosting services to the alleged infringers who had posted copyrighted pictures on their website. In the second case of Gorman v. Ameritrade, the U.S. Court of Appeals (D.C. Cir) employed a active/passive test and came to the conclusion that the defendant, Ameritrade, could be subject to personal jurisdiction of the Court due to the active nature of its website in the territory covered by the Court's jurisdiction. Both of these cases have significant consequences for Canadian companies doing business online in that the legal principles articulated in these cases apply alike both to out of State and non-U.S. companies such as Canadian companies with an online presence. To view a detailed discussion of the above cases prepared by DWW associate, Javad Heydary, visit: http://dww.local/articles/online-jurisdiction.htm For a copy of the court's decision in Gorman, visit: http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/200206/01-7085a.txt For a copy of the court's decision in ALS, visit: http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=011812.P