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Personal Jurisdiction and The Internet: An Update
As set forth in a prior article appearing in the April issue of the Internet Law & Strategy newsletter, despite some suggestions to the contrary, the rise of the Internet as a business tool does not portend the end of limits on personal jurisdiction. Rather, the courts are continuing to find that the Internet merely provides another vehicle (albeit an electronic one) through which a party may purposely avail itself of the privilege of conducting business in a foreign state and thus subject itself to jurisdiction in that state. In recent cases, the federal courts have continued to analyze the characteristics of this relatively new and expanding technology under the Supreme Court's existing personal jurisdiction precedent. Instead of changing the personal jurisdiction standard, which is grounded in the Constitution, or articulating a new test for Internet contacts, the courts have continued to apply the existing personal jurisdiction standards to Internet activities.
In early cases addressing personal jurisdiction involving Internet contacts with the forum state, some courts found jurisdiction to be present simply because the defendant's Web site could be accessed in the forum state. See, Inset Systems, Inc. v. Instruction Set, Inc., 937 F. Supp. 161 (D. Conn. 1996). These cases quickly became the minority and now courts unanimously explicitly or implicitly reject the idea that placing information on the Internet subjects a person or entity to personal jurisdiction in each state in which the information is accessed.
An example of a circuit court opinion that addressed the question of personal jurisdiction in the Internet context is ALS Scan, Inc. v. Digital Service Consultants, Inc., 293 F.3d 707 (4th Cir. 2002), cert. denied 537 U.S. 1105 (2003). ALS Scan addressed whether Digital Service Consultants, Inc. (Digital), a Georgia-based Internet Service Provider (ISP), was subject to personal jurisdiction in Maryland based on purely Internet-related contacts. Digital was sued by ALS Scan, Inc. (ALS) as an alleged contributory copyright infringer because it provided bandwidth to a co-defendant, Alternative Products, Inc. (Alternative) through which Alternative maintained its Web site. Alternative was posting photographs on its Web site that allegedly infringed on ALS's copyrights in those photographs. Alternative sold memberships to access its Web site and, in turn, the photographs, to people who had access to the Internet, including those in Maryland. In essence, ALS alleged that Digital, as the ISP, “enabled” Alternative to publish the allegedly copyrighted photographs on the Internet.
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