UMass Law Professor Rick Peltz-Steele reported on a Massachusetts internet jurisdiction case in the Europe-based International Journal of Procedural Law.
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UMass Law Professor Rick Peltz-Steele reported on a Massachusetts internet jurisdiction case in the Europe-based International Journal of Procedural Law.
In the case, SCVNGR, Inc. v. Punchh, Inc., a Boston-based software maker accused an out-of-state competitor of defamation. Judge Mitchell H. Kaplan ruled that the out-of-state defendant’s business relationships with Massachusetts enterprises were too attenuated to support jurisdiction. The court reaffirmed its conclusion after remand from the state high court in 2018.
Peltz-Steele compared the ruling to developments in global internet jurisdiction in foreign courts, especially a key Australian ruling. He concluded that the persistence of conventional approaches to personal jurisdiction in the United States may give rise to problems in transnational enforcement in media torts and intellectual property law.
Peltz-Steele wrote about the SCVNGR case in its first trial iteration for his blog, The Savory Tort. He was quoted on the SCVNGR case after remand in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in November 2018. The present article appears in volume 8:2 of the International Journal of Procedural Law.