10-2980 be2, LLC, v. Ivanov

Listen to this article

Civil Procedure
Personal jurisdiction

A state cannot exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant who only created a website that has 20 users in that state.

“The record before us does not show that Ivanov deliberately targeted or exploited the Illinois market. All that be2 Holding submitted regarding Ivanov’s activity related to Illinois is the Internet printout showing that just 20 persons who listed Illinois addresses had at some point created free dating profiles on be2.net. The printout shows only the nickname and age of each user, the city the user then called home, and the type of relationship the user was seeking. Even if these 20 people are active users who live in Illinois, the constitutional requirement of minimum contacts is not satisfied simply because a few residents have registered accounts on be2.net. To the contrary, these are attenuated contacts that could not give rise to personal jurisdiction without offending traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”

“We see no evidence that Ivanov targeted the Illinois market that might make this case more comparable to GoDaddy’s massive and successful exploitation of the Illinois market in uBID v. GoDaddy Group through an advertising campaign that produced hundreds of thousands of customers in the state and millions of dollars in annual revenues. See 623 F.3d at 428-29. We do not see evidence of any interactions between Ivanov and the be2.net members with Illinois addresses. The absence of that evidence and the minuscule number of registrants make this case much closer to Mobile Anesthesiologists, where the accessibility of the website in Illinois was not sufficient to show conduct targeted at the state. 623 F.3d at 446. As far as we can tell from the documents submitted by be2 Holding, the 20 Chicagoans who created free profiles on be2.net may have done so unilaterally by stumbling across the website and clicking a button that automatically published their dating preferences online. There is no evidence that defendant Ivanov targeted or exploited the market in the state that would allow a conclusion that he availed himself of the privilege of doing business in the state.”

Reversed and Remanded.

10-2980 be2, LLC, v. Ivanov

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Shadur, J., Hamilton, J.

Full Text