## Facts

- French law (including Penal Code art. R.645-1) restricts the public display and sale-related display of Nazi uniforms, insignia, and emblems, subject to limited exceptions.
- Yahoo! Inc. operated the U.S.-based website Yahoo.com, which included an auction service where Nazi memorabilia and related material were offered for sale.
- Yahoo’s French subsidiary site (Yahoo.fr) did not itself display Nazi-memorabilia auctions, but users in France could reach the U.S. auction pages via links and direct access to Yahoo.com.
- Ligue Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme (LICRA) and Union des Étudiants Juifs de France (UEJF) sued Yahoo in France, alleging that access from French territory to the auctions violated French public-order rules.
- A French court ordered Yahoo to implement screening or filtering measures to prevent internet users located in France from accessing the Nazi-memorabilia auctions on Yahoo.com, and it later reinforced the order with a compliance deadline and daily monetary penalties.
- Yahoo challenged French jurisdiction, arguing that the service was primarily directed to U.S. users, that servers and operations were located in the United States, and that restricting access would conflict with U.S. First Amendment protections.
- Yahoo also argued that location-based blocking was not realistically achievable because it would require unreliable user declarations or the use of cookies that users might block for privacy reasons.
- Evidence before the French courts indicated that IP-based geolocation could identify user location about 70% of the time and that combining IP tools with user declarations (for example, requiring a nationality or residence declaration when opening a page or before certain searches) could approach 90% reliability.
- The record also indicated Yahoo already differentiated users by location for business purposes (such as displaying French-language advertising banners to users connecting from French territory) and controlled aspects of auction fulfillment (such as delivery destinations), while prohibiting other categories of listings (for example, drugs or other prohibited items).

## Issues

1. Whether French courts had jurisdiction over Yahoo! Inc., a U.S. company, based on the availability in France of Yahoo.com auction pages offering items whose display and sale are unlawful under French law.
2. Whether Yahoo could be ordered to take reasonable technical measures to prevent users located in France from accessing Nazi-memorabilia auctions hosted on Yahoo.com.
3. Whether Yahoo’s claims of technical difficulty and U.S. free-speech protections limited the scope of French court orders aimed at restricting access from French territory.

## Decision

- The Cour de cassation sustained the exercise of French jurisdiction over Yahoo! Inc. because the challenged online activity was accessible from France and the alleged harm occurred in France.
- The court accepted that French courts could order Yahoo to take reasonably effective measures to prevent access from French territory to content unlawful under French public-order rules.
- The court did not treat the U.S. location of Yahoo’s servers or Yahoo’s reliance on U.S. constitutional speech protections as a bar to French orders limited to access occurring in France.
- The court rejected the claim that compliance was impossible as a legal defense where the record supported the availability of technical methods capable of substantially limiting access by users in France.

## Legal Principles

- A French court may exercise jurisdiction over foreign-based internet conduct when the content is accessible in France and the alleged injury or illegality is realized in France.
- Courts may require a service provider to take reasonable technical steps to reduce or prevent access from the forum’s territory to content that violates the forum’s public-order rules, even if the measures are not perfectly accurate.
- The foreign location of servers or corporate headquarters does not, by itself, prevent application of domestic public-order law to access and effects within the regulating state.
- Reliance on foreign free-speech rules does not automatically defeat territorially focused restrictions intended to prevent access to unlawful material within the state.

## Conclusion

In *Ligue Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme v. Yahoo! Inc.*, the Cour de cassation confirmed that France could assert jurisdiction over Yahoo’s U.S.-hosted auctions because French users could access Nazi-memorabilia listings from France, and it allowed orders requiring Yahoo to implement reasonably effective filtering measures aimed at blocking access from French territory despite Yahoo’s technical and U.S. free-speech objections.


Ligue Contre le Racisme et l'Antisémitisme v. Yahoo! Inc., France, Cour de Cassation, No. 220, ILDC 777 (2003)