First Circuit Argument Weighs Constitutionality of TVPA
Last month, the First Circuit (Judge Lara Montecalvo, presiding, with retired Justice Stephen Breyer and Senior Judge Sandra Lynch) heard oral argument in Boniface v. Viliena. Viliena, a Haitian national who has been a legal permanent resident of the United States since 2008, is challenging a $15.5 million jury award under the Torture Victim Protection…
Continue ReadingExtraterritoriality in Comparative Perspective
Extraterritoriality has been on the outs with the Roberts Court, which has curtailed the reach of U.S. trademark, human rights, securities, and racketeering laws via the presumption against extraterritoriality. But globally, extraterritoriality may be on the rise. Countries have flexed their extraterritorial muscles to address data privacy, human rights, competition law, tax base erosion, and…
Continue ReadingDistrict Court Applies Securities Fraud Provision to Foreign Transactions
Does § 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act apply to securities on foreign exchanges? Generally, the answer is no. The Supreme Court held in Morrison v. National Australia Bank (2010) that § 10(b)—the Act’s principal antifraud provision—applies only to transactions on U.S. exchanges and to transactions in unlisted securities that occur in the United States….
Continue ReadingAll I Want for Christmas (from the Supreme Court)
Following up on John Coyle’s post yesterday, I’ve prepared my own list of things I wish courts in the United States would do differently in transnational litigation. 1. Abandon the U.S.-Conduct Requirement for the Presumption Against Extraterritoriality The Supreme Court uses a presumption against extraterritoriality to determine the geographic scope of federal statutes. There have…
Continue ReadingExtraterritoriality and Self-Determination
Professor Evan Criddle has written a fascinating article on extraterritoriality, forthcoming in the American Journal of International Law, but available now on SSRN. Evan argues that much extraterritorial application of domestic law violates the right to self-determination under international law by subjecting non-nationals outside the territory of the regulating state to laws that are not…
Continue ReadingConstitutionality of TVPA Challenged in First Circuit
As previously reported at TLB, a Massachusetts jury last year awarded $15.5 million in damages against Jean Morose Viliena for torture and extrajudicial killing under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). Viliena was mayor of a town in Haiti where the three plaintiffs lived. The jury found him responsible for murdering the brother of one…
Continue ReadingApplying the TVPRA to Foreign Websites
The facts of Doe v. WebGroup Czech Republic are horrific. The complaint alleges that a U.S. citizen, fourteen years old, was filmed being raped, repeatedly, in the United States. Videos of the assaults were uploaded to foreign pornography websites, from which they were then viewed tens of thousands of times in the United States. Are…
Continue ReadingTransnational Litigation at the Supreme Court, October Term 2024
Today is the first day of the Supreme Court’s October Term. This post briefly discusses four transnational litigation cases in which the Court has already granted cert, as well as several others that are in the pipeline and could be decided this Term. Readers can also consult our Supreme Court page. Cases in which the…
Continue ReadingMore Thoughts on the Seventh Circuit’s Motorola Decision
Like Tim Holbrook, we found the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Motorola Solutions, Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp. Ltd. provocative. Motorola expands the reach of the Defend Trade Secrecy Act (DTSA) in ways that strike us as inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s concerns about extraterritorial application of U.S. law, particularly in the context of intellectual property…
Continue ReadingSeventh Circuit Explores Copyright and Trade Secret Extraterritoriality
In Motorola Solutions, Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp. Ltd., the Seventh Circuit  recently addressed the extraterritorial reach of two federal intellectual property statutes, the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the Copyright Act. The court held that the DTSA does apply extraterritorially and allowed recovery on that basis. The court, however, rejected the recovery of…
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