Supreme Court declines taking Yahoo! Case

Posted May 31st 2006 2:25PM by Howard Tsung
Filed under: International Markets, Other Issues, Internet, Yahoo! (YHOO)

On Tuesday the Supreme Court declined to hear a case regarding Yahoo!'s ability to countersue the plaintiffs against Yahoo! in the French court case which levied a fine of $15 million against Yahoo!.

The original case began with Yahoo!'s listing of Nazi memorabilia, which is a prohibited item in France, on its website in France. A complaint was filed by the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) and the League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) against Yahoo!

The French court ruled that Yahoo! could be fined $15 million unless the items were inaccessible to French residents; Yahoo! decided to remove the items altogether.

Yahoo! brought the case over to the US by contesting the decision in Federal District Court in California on the premise of constitutional free speech and won, but the ruling was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

One of the issues now is whether Yahoo! can countersue UEJF and LICRA, which is why UEJF and LICRA took the case to the Supreme Court, but morevover it opens the door to whether defendants in lawsuits that cross national boundaries can file countersuits in their home jurisdictions.

La Ligue Contre Le Racisme Et L'Anti-semitisme, v. Yahoo! Inc., 05-1302

Tags: france, licra, memorabilia, nazi, uejf, yahoo