One of the benefits of reading a lot of non-U.S. sites is that I occasionally find out about cases here in the U.S. that I might otherwise miss. In today’s news, Out-Law.com reports on a lawsuit and ruling involving jurisdiction:
Suzanne Shell created sets of information and training materials for families dealing with state child protection services, then later sued a long list of people and organisations for what she said was unauthorised use of her copyrighted works.
Many of the people she sued claimed that the Colorado courts system had no jurisdiction over them. Shell said that many of them were subject to Colorado justice because they had used her website.
The court held that viewing a web site statement saying that anyone using the site consents to jurisdiction in her county was not equivalent to consent binding as it was not the same as site visitors consenting to those terms.