Applying 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…
Continue ReadingWhat Does Overruling Chevron Mean for Transnational Litigation?
For the past forty years, under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), courts have deferred to an agency’s interpretation of a federal statute when the statute is ambiguous and the agency’s interpretation is reasonable. On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Chevron. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court…
Continue ReadingVirtual Workshop: Beyond the Presumption Against Extraterritoriality
Next Tuesday (July 2), TLB Editor Maggie Gardner will present at the Hamburg Max Planck Institute’s virtual monthly Current Research in Private International Law workshop. The talk, which is open to the public (register here), will begin at 8:00 am EST and will be followed by an open discussion. Here is a description of Maggie’s…
Continue ReadingThrowback Thursday: Empagran’s Complicated Legacy
Twenty years ago tomorrow, on June 14, 2004, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd. v. Empagran S.A. The majority opinion, authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, interpreted the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982 (FTAIA) to preclude the application of U.S. antitrust law to injuries in other countries. Empagran…
Continue ReadingFourth Circuit Applies Recent Supreme Court Decision on RICO Injuries
In Percival Partners Ltd. v. Nduom, the Fourth Circuit (Judge Harris, joined by Judge Thacker and Judge Richardson) applied last Term’s decision in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin (2023) to conclude that the plaintiffs’ alleged RICO injury was impermissibly extraterritorial. In an analysis that embraced Yegiazaryan’s contextual approach to siting RICO injuries, the Fourth Circuit held that…
Continue ReadingSecond Circuit Allows Securities Claims Against Crypto-Asset Exchange
In Morrison v. National Australia Bank (2010), the U.S. Supreme Court applied the presumption against extraterritoriality to § 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, holding that this provision applies only to transactions in the United States. Morrison’s transactional test has proven difficult to apply to unlisted securities that do not trade on an exchange. In…
Continue ReadingAbitron on Remand
Last year, in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., the Supreme Court held that the federal trademark statute—known as the Lanham Act—applies only to domestic conduct infringing U.S. trademarks. A group of Austrian and German companies collectively known as “Abitron” placed U.S.-protected trademarks owned by a U.S. company, Hetronic, on products made in Europe. Some of…
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