Federal Reporter, Third Series

Cook v. Gates, 528 F.3d 42 (1st Cir. 2008), is a decision on July 9, 2008, of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that upheld the "Don't ask, Don't tell" (DADT) policy (Title 10, Section 654) against due process and equal protection Fifth Amendment challenges and a free speech challenge under the First Amendment, and which found that no earlier Supreme Court decision held that sexual orientation is a suspect or quasi-suspect classification.

Doe v. MySpace, Inc., 528 F.3d 413 (2008), is a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that MySpace was immune under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 from liability for a sexual assault of a minor that arose from posts on the MySpace platform.

Doninger v. Niehoff, 527 F.3d 41 (2d Cir. 2008) was a United States Court of Appeals case. The case was heard by a three-judge Second Circuit panel that included Judges Sonia Sotomayor, Loretta A. Preska, and Debra Livingston. The case involved a student at Lewis S. Mills High School in Connecticut who was barred from the student government after she called the superintendent and other school officials "douchebags" in a LiveJournal blog post written while off-campus that encouraged students to call an administrator and "piss her off more".

Witt v. Department of the Air Force, 527 F.3d 806 (9th Cir. 2008) is a federal lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of 10 U.S.C. § 654, the law, since repealed, that excluded openly homosexual people from serving in the United States military, commonly known as "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT). The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in 2008 that under Lawrence v.

United States v. Shi, 525 F.3d 709 (9th Cir. 2008), is a case involving piracy on the high seas. The case held that United States could try foreign nationals on foreign-flagged vessels for crimes committed on the high seas, outside the territory of the United States.

Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft Corp., also known as Lucent Technologies Inc. v. Gateway Inc., was a long-running patent infringement case between Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft litigated in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California and appealed multiple times to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Alcatel-Lucent was awarded $1.53 billion in a final verdict in August 2007 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego. The damages award was reversed on appeal in September 2009, and the case was returned for a separate trial on the amount of damages.

United States v. Arnold, 533 F.3d 1003 (9th Cir. 2008), is a United States court case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not require government agents to have reasonable suspicion before searching laptops or other digital devices at the border, including international airports. This decision has caused worry and some controversy among Fourth Amendment advocates, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Especially troubled are those that legitimately store sensitive business, legal, or customer data; who worry that federal agents might leak information found from laptop searches.

Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008), is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, held that immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) did not apply to an interactive online operator whose questionnaire violated the Fair Housing Act. However, the court found that Roommates.com was immune under Section 230 of the CDA for the “additional comments” portion of the website. This case was the first to place a limit on the broad immunity that Section 230(c) gives to service providers that has been established under Zeran v. AOL (1997).

United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins (520 F.3d 976) is a 2008 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concerning civil forfeiture in admiralty law. Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for a three-judge panel that ordered that the shark fins be returned to their owners, reversing a decision by the Southern District of California. The government did not appeal the case further. The case began in 2002 when a Coast Guard crew working from a Navy ship stopped and searched the King Diamond II, a U.S.-flagged, Hong Kong–based vessel in international waters off the coast of Guatemala. On board the ship they found shark fins, equivalent to 32.3 tons (29.3 tonnes) but without any corresponding shark carcasses.

Chicago Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law v. Craigslist, 519 F.3d 666 (7th Cir. 2008), is a Seventh Circuit decision affirming a lower court ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) provides immunity to Internet service providers that "publish" classified ads that violate the Fair Housing Act (FHA).

Citizens for Tax Reform v. Deters, 518 F.3d 375 (6th Cir. 2008), was a decision that overturned an Ohio statute that made it a felony to pay petitioners by the signature.

Dudnikov v. Chalk & Vermilion Fine Arts, Inc., 514 F.3d 1063 (10th Cir. 2008), was decided by the Tenth Circuit in January 2008. The Tenth Circuit overturned a dismissal granted by the District Court upon a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction under FRCP12(b)(2). Dudnikov addresses issues arising from personal jurisdiction and the internet, applying standards set by the Supreme Court of the United States in a line of cases that progressively defined the doctrine and its scope in light of the Fourteenth Amendment.

SRI International, Inc. v. Internet Security Systems, Inc., 511 F.3d 1186 (Fed. Cir. 2008), was a patent infringement case which determined whether technical documents placed on a company's FTP server could be considered prior art as defined by 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). The United States District Court for the District of Delaware had held four of SRI International's patents invalid due to prior art considerations. A three-member panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed and remanded the District Court decision. The decision is particularly relevant to patent law because it set the precedent for treatment of electronic information under the Federal Circuit's public accessibility precedents for prior art.

Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 (9th Cir., 2007) was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit involving a copyright infringement claim against Amazon.com, Inc. and Google, Inc., by the magazine publisher Perfect 10, Inc. The court held that framing and hyperlinking of original images for use in an image search engine constituted a fair use of Perfect 10's images because the use was highly transformative, and thus not an infringement of the magazine's copyright ownership of the original images. The case originated as a suit against Google, with Amazon being added as another defendant at the Circuit Court hearings, because Amazon used thumbnail images that had been obtained from Google.

Connection Distributing Co. v. Holder, 557 F.3d 321 (6th Cir. 2009) is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the record-keeping provisions of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act did not violate the First Amendment. Section 2257 of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act requires those who create sexually explicit materials to maintain records of their model's age and identities, as a measure against child pornography. Connection Distributing, a publisher of swinging magazines, challenged the constitutionality of the statute, as individuals who posted on Connection's magazines would also be required to create and maintain such records, and provide them to the publisher.

Lisa Simpson; Anne Gilmore v. University of Colorado Boulder, 500 F.3d 1170 (10th Cir. 2007), was a case in which the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there was enough evidence that the University of Colorado Boulder was deliberately indifferent under Title IX of not taking appropriate measures to limit sexual assault on their campus despite officials, such as Gary Barnett, having a general knowledge of the harassment and the risk of sexual assault occurring.

Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. von Eschenbach, 495 F.3d 695 (D.C. Cir. 2007), cert denied, 552 U.S. 1159 (2008) was resolved in early 2008 when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the appeal. Their refusal left standing the appellate court decision, which said that patients have no right to "a potentially toxic drug with no proven therapeutic benefit."

Douglas v. U.S. Dist. Court ex rel Talk America, 495 F.3d 1062 (2007), is a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case that examines whether a service provider may change the terms of its service contract by merely posting a revised contract on its website, without informing the other party of the changes.

Perfect 10, Inc. v. Visa International Service Ass'n, 494 F.3d 788, is a 2006 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which held that Visa Inc., Mastercard, First Data Corporation and its subsidiary CardService International, and Humboldt Bank could not be held secondarily liable for copyright and trademark infringement by websites that had stolen content from the pornographic magazine Perfect 10.

American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Agency, 493 F.3d 644 (6th Cir. 2007), is a case decided July 6, 2007, in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to bring the suit against the National Security Agency (NSA), because they could not present evidence that they were the targets of the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program" (TSP).

Jandreau vs. Nicholson is a United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case that dealt with competency of lay testimony as it pertains to establishing a diagnosis of a condition.

Doe ex. rel. Tarlow v. District of Columbia, 489 F.3d 376 (D.C. Cir. 2007) is a unanimous decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, written by Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, in which the Court upheld a 2003 District of Columbia statute that stated the conditions for authorizing a non-emergency surgical procedure on a mentally incompetent person. This case developed out of an appeal to a district court decision that was brought on behalf of (ex. rel.) a mentally incompetent patient who was subjected to an abortion without her consent and another patient who was subjected to an eye surgery without the patient's consent.

Perfect 10, Inc. v. CCBill LLC, 488 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir. 2007), is a U.S. court case between a publisher of an adult entertainment magazine and the webhosting, connectivity, and payment service companies. The plaintiff Perfect 10 asserted that defendants CCBill (payment service company) and CWIE (webhosting and connectivity service company) violated copyright, trademark, and state law violation of right of publicity laws, unfair competition, false and misleading advertising by providing services to websites that posted images stolen from Perfect 10's magazine and website. Defendants sought to invoke statutory safe harbor exemptions from copyright infringement liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C.

Kahle v. Gonzales, 487 F.3d 697 (9th Cir. 2007) (previously named Kahle v. Ashcroft) is a First Amendment case that challenges the change in the US copyright law from an opt-in system to an opt-out system.

United States v. Andrus, 483 F.3d 711 (10th. Cir. 2007), decided on April 25, 2007, was a case heard in the Tenth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. The court held that defendant's father had the apparent authority to consent to search of defendant's computer.

Navajo Nation v. United States Forest Service, 479 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2007), reversed after rehearing en banc, 535 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2008) was brought to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2007. It was a case that was brought about by previous cases dealing with the expansion of the Snowbowl ski resort on the government-owned sacred lands of the Navajo peoples located in northern Arizona. In Navajo Nation v. U.S. Forest Service, the conflict escalated with the Federal government's use of artificial snow containing treated sewage on the sacred San Francisco Peaks, an area that is owned by the Federal government. The Navajo people, along with twelve other nations, made the appeal, citing that the use of sewage water violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Davis v. City of Las Vegas, 478 F.3d 1048 (9th Cir. 2007), was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined whether a Las Vegas, Nevada police officer utilized excessive force when making an arrest.

United States v. Lazarenko, 476 F.3d 642, was a landmark decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in which it was ruled that former Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Lazarenko had committed money laundering, wire fraud, and interstate transportation of stolen property by using American banks, along with banks in several other countries, to illegally launder money plundered from Ukrainian businesses and the government during his tenure as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and later as Prime Minister of Ukraine.

Blanch v. Koons, 467 F.3d 244, is a copyright case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2006. Fashion photographer Andrea Blanch sued appropriation artist Jeff Koons for copyright infringement after he used an image of a woman's lower legs taken from one of her photographs in a collage of his own. Koons claimed fair use, arguing he had transformed it sufficiently from its original purpose through his reuse. It is considered a significant case in addressing the latter issue. Blanch brought the action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York after seeing the legs from her image, shot for a 2000 article in Allure, used in Niagara, a collage by Koons exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in 2001, without her permission.

Tritent International Corp. v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 467 F.3d 547 (6th Cir. 2006), is a US antitrust law case decided by the Court of Appeals on the Sixth Circuit. The case is notable, inter alia, because it provides a summary of the difficult terms of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

Lee v. Keith, 463 F.3d 763 (7th Cir. 2006) was a case in which, on September 18, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit struck down Illinois' ballot access laws, opining: In combination, the ballot access requirements for independent legislative candidates in Illinois--the early filing deadline, the 10% signature requirement, and the additional statutory restriction that disqualifies anyone who signs an independent candidate's nominating petition from voting in the primary--operate to unconstitutionally burden the freedom of political association guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

In Guiles v. Marineau, 461 F.3d 320 (2d. Cir. 2006), cert. denied by 127 S.Ct. 3054 (2007), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States protect the right of a student in the public schools to wear a shirt insulting the President of the United States and depicting images relating to drugs and alcohol.

Marrita Murphy and Daniel J. Leveille, Appellants v. Internal Revenue Service and United States of America, Appellees (commonly known as Murphy v. IRS), is a tax case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit originally held that the taxation of emotional distress awards by the federal government is unconstitutional. That decision was vacated, or rendered void, by the Court on December 22, 2006. The Court eventually overturned its original decision, finding against Murphy in an opinion issued on July 3, 2007. The July 3, 2007 decision was that the taxpayer's recovery could be taxed under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution even if the recovery were not "income" under the Sixteenth Amendment.

United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency, 458 F.3d 822 (8th Cir. 2006), was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that was handed down on August 18, 2006.

Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning, 455 F.3d 859 (8th Cir. 2006), was a federal lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska and decided on appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. It challenged the federal constitutionality of Nebraska Initiative Measure 416, a 2000 ballot initiative that amended the Nebraska Constitution to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages, civil unions, and other same-sex relationships. On May 12, 2005, United States District Judge Joseph Bataillon ruled that Initiative Measure 416 violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and was a bill of attainder in violation of the Contract Clause of Article I.

United States v. Vampire Nation, 451 F.3d 189, is a 2006 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit regarding the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and asset forfeiture. A three-judge panel unanimously affirmed the conviction and sentence of Frederick Banks, a Pittsburgh man, on numerous felony charges resulting from fraudulent schemes carried out over the Internet. The case takes its title, which has been singled out as memorable and included among lists of amusingly titled cases, from one of Banks' aliases, an electronic music group of which he was the sole regular member. He had filed the appeal under that name while representing himself. Banks had been offering discounted versions of Microsoft software online under different names as an Amazon.com reseller.

Buchanan v. Nicholson, 451 F.3d 1331 (Fed. Cir. 2006) is a United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case that dealt with the credibility of lay evidence as it pertains to Veterans claims.

Hayden v. Pataki, 449 F.3d 305 (2nd Cir. 2006), was a legal challenge to New York State's law disenfranchising individuals convicted of felonies while in prison and on parole. New York State is one of the 47 states to prohibit citizens from voting while in prison.

Muntaqim v. Coombe, 449 F.3d 371 (2d Cir. 2006), was a legal challenge to New York State’s law disenfranchising individuals convicted of felonies while in prison and on parole. The plaintiff, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim who was serving a life sentence at the time, argued that the law had a disproportionate impact on African Americans and therefore violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act as a denial of the right to vote on account of race.

Selman v. Cobb County School District, 449 F.3d 1320 (11th Cir. 2006), was a United States court case in Cobb County, Georgia involving a sticker placed in public school biology textbooks. The sticker was a disclaimer stating that "Evolution is a theory, not a fact, concerning the origin of living things." The plaintiffs were parents of children in Cobb County schools who claimed the sticker violated both the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution and the separation of church and state clause in the Georgia State Constitution because its purpose and effect was to cast doubt on the scientific consensus regarding evolutionary theory in order to promote religious beliefs in the schools. Trial was held in November 2004.

Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley, Ltd., 448 F.3d 605, is a 2006 case of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit regarding fair use of images in a pictorial history text. It affirmed the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which held at trial that the publisher's use of several images of past Grateful Dead concert posters and tickets, reduced considerably, in a timeline of the band's history was a sufficiently transformative use. The case began during the pre-production of Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip, a coffee table book published by Dorling Kindersley (DK) that included a wide variety of information and imagery, presented in a timeline format beginning with the band's 1965 founding.

Bancoult v. McNamara, 445 F.3d 427 (D.C. Cir. 2006), was a legal case in which Olivier Bancoult sued Robert McNamara, the former United States Secretary of Defense, challenging the removal of Chagosians from Diego Garcia when the United States of America built a military base in the British Indian Ocean Territory. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the case raised nonjusticiable political questions and dismissed the case.

Jespersen v. Harrah's Operating Co., 444 F.3d 1104 (9th Cir. Apr. 14, 2006) (en banc) was a United States federal employment law sex discrimination case.

In International Airport Centers, L.L.C. v. Citrin, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals evaluated the dismissal of the plaintiffs' lawsuit for failure to state a claim based upon the interpretation of the word "transmission" in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030. Jacob Citrin had been employed by IAC, who had lent him a laptop for use while under their employment. Upon leaving IAC, he deleted the data on the laptop before returning it to IAC. The Court of Appeals decided to reverse the decision and reinstated IAC's lawsuit.

Sprint PCS v. La Cañada Flintridge, 435 F. 3d 993 (9th Cir. 2006), was a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that determined whether a city could, consistent with California and Federal law, deny a telecommunications company a permit to construct and to install a wireless antenna based on aesthetic considerations.

Arce v. García, 434 F.3d 1254 (11th Cir. 2006), is a landmark Eleventh Circuit case brought by three Salvadoran plaintiffs under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). These claims were brought under the doctrine of command responsibility against two high-ranking Salvadoran military personnel who ordered and carried out grave human rights abuses over the course of the country’s twelve year civil war.

Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et l'antisemitisme, 433 F.3d 1199 (9th Cir. 2006), was an Internet jurisdiction case of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, on whether American courts must help enforce penalties against American-operated websites that had been enacted by other nations.

United States v. Extreme Associates, 431 F.3d 150 (3rd Cir. 2005), is a 2005 U.S. law case revolving around issues of obscenity. Extreme Associates, a pornography company owned by Rob Zicari and his wife Lizzy Borden (also known as Janet Romano), was prosecuted by the federal government for alleged distribution of obscenity across state lines. After several years of legal proceedings, the matter ended on March 11, 2009, with a plea agreement by Rob Zicari and Lizzy Borden.

BMG Music v. Gonzalez, 430 F.3d 888 (7th Cir. 2005), was a court decision in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that a record company could sue a person who engaged in online sharing of music files for copyright infringement. The decision is noteworthy for rejecting the defendant's fair use defense, which had rested upon her contention that she was merely "sampling" songs with the intention of possibly purchasing the downloaded songs in the future, a practice known informally as "try before you buy".

Frosty Treats, Inc. v. Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc., 426 F.3d 1001 (8th Cir. 2005), is a trademark case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that the name of the largest novelty ice cream truck franchise in the United States was neither distinctive nor famous enough to receive protection against being used in a violent video game.