Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp.’s Empirical Analysis
306 F.3d 17 · 2002
Citation profile
29 federal appellate · 15 district · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 163 later decisions — most recently April 2025 · most notably Registercom Inc v. Verio Inc, Nicosia v. Amazon.com, Inc. (2016)
29 federal appellate · 15 district · 15 state decisions — followed in 12 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on At&T Technologies, Inc. v. Communications Workers · Volt Information Sciences Inc v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University · Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. · Allied-Bruce Terminix Cos., Inc. v. Dobson · Perry v. Thomas
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 163 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[r]easonably conspicuous notice of the existence of contract terms and unambiguous manifestation of assent to those terms by consumers are essential if electronic bargaining is to have integrity and credibility.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““We are not persuaded that a reasonably prudent offeree in these circumstances would have known of the existence of license terms. Plaintiffs were responding to an offer that did not carry an immediately visible notice of the existence of license terms or require unambiguous manifestation of assent to those terms.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“after being presented with those terms. Although the Court in Specht noted an exception when the writing does not appear to be a contract and the terms are not called to the attention of the recipient, the Court found that the contractual nature was not obvious specifically because the plaintiffs were responding to an offer that”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.