Federal Reporter, Third Series

Eunique v. Powell, 281 F.3d 940 (9th Cir. 2002), challenging passport denial for child support arrearage under 42 U.S.C. § 652(k) and enacted as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in 1996, is the second cornerstone of the Court's thinking on passport denial/revocation under this law.

Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, 280 F.3d 934 (9th Cir. 2002) withdrawn, re-filed at 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003), is a U.S. court case between a commercial photographer and a search engine company. During the case, ownership of Arriba Soft changed to Sorceron, the operator of the Internet search engine Ditto.com. The court found that US search engines may use thumbnails of images (size limits not determined), though the issue of inline linking to full size images instead of going to the original site was not resolved.

Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Welles, 279 F.3d 796 (9th Cir., 2002), was a ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The ruling was an important early precedent on the nominative use of trademarked terms for self-identification on the World Wide Web.

Harvey v. Horan, 278 F. 3d 370 (4th Cir. 2002), is a federal court case dealing with felons' rights of access to DNA testing. The Eastern Virginia District Court originally found that felons were entitled access to DNA testing on potentially exculpatory evidence, but this finding was later overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nevertheless, the case paved the way for the Innocence Protection Act, which ensures that convicted offenders can try to prove their innocence by requesting DNA testing on evidence in government's possession that was used in their case.

Konop v. Hawaiian Airlines, Inc., 302 F.3d 868 (2002) was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and overturned in part the ruling of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. An original, unanimous opinion of the Court of Appeals was filed on January 8, 2001 (236 F.3d 1035 (2001)), which overturned the District Court opinion in its entirety. The Department of Justice then sought to intervene in the case at the behest of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association v. FCC, 275 F.3d 337 (4th Cir. 2001) was a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Congress required satellite television carriers to carry all requesting local broadcast stations in the market where the carrier voluntarily decides to carry one local station in order to, in part, preserve a multiplicity of local broadcast outlets for over-the-air-viewers who do not subscribe either to satellite or cable service.

Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley (originally known as Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes), 273 F.3d 429 (2nd Cir., 2001), was a court ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. This ruling was the first circuit-level test of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

United States v. Emerson, 270 F.3d 203 (5th Cir. 2001), cert. denied, 536 U.S. 907 (2002), is a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit holding that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees individuals the right to bear arms. The case involved a challenge to the Constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)(C)(ii), a federal statute that prohibited the transportation of firearms or ammunition in interstate commerce by persons subject to a court order whose explicit terms prohibits the use of physical force against an intimate partner or child.

Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 268 F.3d 1257 (11th Cir. 2001), was a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit against the owner of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, vacating an injunction prohibiting the publisher of Alice Randall's 2001 parody, The Wind Done Gone, from distributing the book.

Voyeur Dorm, L.C. v. City of Tampa, 265 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. 2001), was a case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in which the court decided whether an adult-oriented website called Voyeur Dorm could be defined as "adult entertainment establishment" under the city's zoning codes. The circuit court was unanimous in its decision that the zoning codes did not apply to an online-only business.

Jazz Photo Corp. v. United States International Trade Commission, 264 F.3d 1094 (Fed. Cir. 2001), was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit clarified the law of repair and reconstruction (permitting the owner of a patented item to fix the item when it breaks, but not to essentially build a new item from the parts of an old one), holding that it was not a patent infringement for one party to restore another party's patented "one-use" camera to be used a second time.

A.D. Bedell Wholesale Co., Inc. v. Philip Morris Inc., 263 F.3d 239 (3d Cir. 2001), was an early appellate case testing the legality of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), in this instance whether it could properly be alleged to violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney, 263 F.3d 359 (4th Cir. 2001), was an Internet domain trademark infringement decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The ruling became an early precedent on the nature of domain names as both trademarked intellectual property and free speech.

Huffman v. Office of Personnel Management, 263 F.3d 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2001) is a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit addressing a two decade-old conflict between the United States Congress and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over the depth of whistleblower protection available to federal civilian employees covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989. The discourse revolves around the meaning of the word 'any'.

United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001), was a landmark American antitrust law case at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java. At the initial trial which began in 1998, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Microsoft's actions constituted unlawful monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.

Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Congress Int'l, Inc., 293 F.3d 791 (5th Cir. 2002) (en banc), was a 2002 en banc 9-6 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, about the scope of copyright protection for building codes and by implication other privately drafted laws adopted by states and municipal governments. A three-fifths majority of the court's fifteen judges held that copyright protection no longer applied to model codes once they were enacted into law.

Saxe v. State College Area School District, 240 F.3d 200 (3d Cir. 2001), was a case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that ruled that the State College Area School District's policy restricting "unwelcome" and "offensive" speech on public school grounds violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause.

A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th. Cir., 2001) was a landmark intellectual property case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that the defendant, peer-to-peer file sharing service Napster, could be held liable for contributory infringement and vicarious infringement of copyright. This was the first major case to address the application of copyright laws to peer-to-peer file sharing.

Amazon. com, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble. com, Inc., 337 F.3d 1024 (Fed. Cir., 2001), was a court ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The ruling was an important early cyberlaw precedent on the matter of the technologies that enable e-commerce and whether such technologies are eligible for patent protection.

Kincaid v. Gibson, 236 F. 3d 342 (6th Cir. 2001) was a United States court case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dealing with freedom of expression.

Núñez v. Caribbean Int’l News Corp. 235 F.3d 18 is a copyright infringement lawsuit where the court evaluated on the issue of whether unauthorized reproduction and publication of photographs that are themselves newsworthy constituted fair use. Puerto Rican newspaper El Vocero displayed photographs of Joyce Giraud, pageant winner without the photographer Sixto Núñez's permission in an article about the controversial photos. The appeal court affirmed the lower court's summary judgment that the use of the pictures qualify as fair use.

Rogers v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 230 F.3d 868 (6th Cir. 2000), was a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that held that remand to a state court cannot be achieved after removal to a federal court by lowering the damages sought to fall below the amount in controversy requirement.

Williams v. Pryor, 229 F.3d 1331 (11th Cir. 2000), rehearing denied, 240 F.3d 944 (11th Cir. 2001) was a federal lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged an Alabama law criminalizing the sale of sex toys in the state. In 1998, a statute enacted by the legislature of the State of Alabama amended the obscenity provisions of the Alabama Code to make the distribution of certain defined sexual devices a criminal offense. Vendors and users of such devices filed a constitutional challenge to the statute in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama against William H. Pryor, Jr., in his official capacity as the Attorney General of the State of Alabama.

Microsystems Software, Inc. v. Scandinavia Online AB, 226 F.3d 35 (1st Cir. 2000), was a civil case filed in 2000 in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. It received considerable attention in the online community because it involved reverse engineering and cryptanalysis of content-control software, allegedly in violation of copyright law and a clickwrap license agreement. In early 2000, Eddy L. O.

C. H. v. Oliva, 226 F.3d 198 (3d Cir. 2000), was a religious freedom case in which mother Carol Hood sued Grace Oliva, her son Zachary's first grade teacher, and related administrators in the Medford Township Public Schools for not allowing the child to read a section of the Bible in class. His kindergarten class had made Thanksgiving paintings the year prior, and his was taken down and subsequently reposted in a less noticeable place for its religious content. The poster was called "I'm Thankful for Jesus." Carol Hood met with Principal Gail Pratt, who defended the school's decisions. She said that reading the story "was the equivalent of 'praying'." Noting that she had received complaints in the past, Ms.

Anastasoff v. United States, 223 F.3d 898 (8th Cir. 2000), was a case decided by the U.S. Eighth Circuit on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. It is notable for being the only case to consider the "Anastasoff issue", that is whether Article Three of the United States Constitution requires a federal court to treat unpublished opinions as precedent.

Urofsky v. Gilmore, 216 F.3d 401 (4th Cir. 2000), is a case decided before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit which concerned the matter of professors challenging the constitutionality of Virginia law restricting access to sexually explicit material on work computers. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) joined the professors in the case against the state of Virginia. A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit overturned an earlier ruling by the District Court, and upheld the Virginia law. The ACLU then requested an en banc hearing of the entire Fourth Circuit, which determined that university instructors do not have a right guaranteed by the United States Constitution to view sexually explicit material on facility computers.

AT&T Corp. v. City of Portland, 216 F.3d 871 (9th Cir., 2000), was a ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The ruling was an important early precedent on the regulation of local cable broadband networks, with the court finding that Federal Communications Commission regulations supersede those of local authorities.The ruling has also been cited as a precedent in network neutrality disputes.

Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F. Supp. 2d 116, (S.D.N.Y. 1999), aff'd 210 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 2000), more widely known as the Pepsi Points case, is an American contract law case regarding offer and acceptance. The case was brought in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1999; its judgment was written by Kimba Wood.

Campbell v. Clinton, 203 F.3d 19 (D.C. Cir. 2000), was a case holding that members of Congress could not sue President Bill Clinton for alleged violations of the War Powers Resolution in his handling of the war in Yugoslavia.

Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc. (194 F.3d 1211 (11th Cir. 1999)) is a United States court case that involved a longstanding dispute about the public domain copyright status of the text of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech, known by the key phrase "I Have a Dream", originally delivered at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The court ruled that King's delivery of the speech was a "performance", rather than a "general publication", of its text, and therefore overruled a lower court judgment granting summary judgment in CBS's favor. The two sides ultimately settled the matter out of court instead of appealing to a higher court.

In Hayden v. County of Nassau, 180 F.3d 42 (2d Cir. 1999), the Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of a suit brought by White and Latino police officers alleging violations of the Equal Protection Clause and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Recording Indus. Ass’n of Am. v. Diamond Multimedia Sys., Inc., 180 F.3d 1072, 51 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1115 (9th Cir. 1999) was a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1999. The court applied the Audio Home Recording Act to the Rio digital audio player manufactured by Diamond Multimedia, concluding that the Rio was not a "digital audio recording device" under that statute.

Hanousek v. United States, 176 F.3d 1116 (9th Cir. 1999), was a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which held that ordinary negligence was the legal standard for criminal negligence under the Clean Water Act. In 1994, during rock removal operations, a backhoe operator accidentally struck a petroleum pipeline near the railroad tracks. The operator's mistake caused the pipeline to rupture and spill between 1,000 and 5,000 US gallons (3,800 and 18,900 L) of heating oil into the Skagway River. Despite not being present at the scene during operations White Pass and Yukon Route Roadmaster Edward Hanousek, Jr. and President Paul Taylor were both held responsible for the spill and convicted.

Hendler v. United States, 175 F.3d 1374 (Fed. Cir. 1999), was a case where the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that although there was a taking, no compensation was due because the net damages were zero. This case is a good illustration of how there are different factors which determine the economic equivalent of the compensation due under the Fifth Amendment. This case uses both set off benefits and severance damages to help determine the amount of just compensation due to the landowner after a taking.

The case Brookfield Communications, Inc. v. West Coast Entertainment Corporation, 174 F.3d 1036 (9th Cir. 1999), heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, established that trademark infringement could occur through the use of trademarked terms in the HTML metatags of web pages when initial interest confusion was likely to result.

AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., 172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 1999) was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, which had granted summary judgment to Excel Communications, Inc. and decided that AT&T Corp. had failed to claim statutory subject matter with U.S. Patent No. 5,333,184 (the '184 patent) under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded the case for further proceedings. Along with State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group, this case was the most referred case on business method patent with a "useful, concrete and tangible result" test by U.S. courts until Bilski v. Kappos authoritatively overruled it.

Fraternal Order of Police, Newark Lodge No. 12 v. City of Newark, 170 F.3d 359 (3d Cir. 1999), was a case challenging an internal order of the City of Newark Police Department requiring its officers to be clean-shaven. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that the order merited strict scrutiny and did not survive exacting review. Therefore, the order violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Gold Coast Hotel & Casino v. United States, 158 F.3d 484 (9th Cir. 1998), was a court case that addressed whether a casino, using the accrual method of accounting, could deduct the value of slot club points earned by slot club members in the tax year in which the members accumulated the minimum points required to redeem a prize, or whether the casino had to wait to deduct the value of the slot club points until the members actually redeemed them.

Able v. United States, 88 F.3d 1280 (2nd Cir. 1996) ("Able I"), 155 F.3d 628 (2nd Cir. 1998) ("Able II"), is a case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that upheld the Don't ask, don't tell (10 USC 654) law against various constitutional challenges. Both Able I and Able II overruled district court decisions striking down "Don't ask, don't tell" as unconstitutional.

SBC Communications, Inc. v. FCC, 154 F.3d 226 (5th Cir. 1998), was a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that upheld §§ 271-275 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as constitutional against a challenge that the provisions acted as a bill of attainder.

Micro Star v. FormGen Inc. 154 F.3d 1107 (9th Cir. 1998) is a legal case applying copyright law to video games, stopping the sales of a compilation of user-generated levels that infringed the copyright of Duke Nukem 3D. Micro Star downloaded the Duke Nukem 3D levels and re-packaged them as Nuke It, after seeing their popularity on the internet. Micro Star filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, asking for declaratory judgment that they had not infringed any copyright. Game publisher FormGen counter-sued, claiming that Micro Star created a derivative work based on Duke Nukem 3D and infringed their copyright. At the time, the most relevant case law was Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.

Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc., 153 F.3d 82 (2d Cir. 1998), was a copyright case about the Russian language weekly Russian Kurier in New York City that had copied and published various materials from Russian newspapers and news agency reports of Itar-TASS. The case was ultimately decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The decision was widely commented upon and the case is considered a landmark case because the court defined rules applicable in the U.S. on the extent to which the copyright laws of the country of origin or those of the U.S. apply in international disputes over copyright.

In re Madden, 151 F.3d 125 (3d Cir. 1998), is a decision from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that established the Madden test, a test used to determine whether an individual is entitled to claim a journalist's privilege.

Castle Rock Entertainment Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group, 150 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 1998), was a U.S. copyright infringement case involving the popular American sitcom Seinfeld. Some U.S. copyright law courses use the case to illustrate modern application of the fair use doctrine. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court's summary judgment that the defendant had committed copyright infringement. The decision is noteworthy for classifying Seinfeld trivia not as unprotected facts, but as protectable expression. The court also rejected the defendant's fair use defense finding that any transformative purpose possessed in the derivative work was "slight to non-existent" under the Supreme Court ruling in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994).

State Street Bank and Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), also referred to as State Street or State Street Bank, was a 1998 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concerning the patentability of business methods. State Street for a time established the principle that a claimed invention was eligible for protection by a patent in the United States if it involved some practical application and, in the words of the State Street opinion, "it produces a useful, concrete and tangible result." With the 2008 Federal Circuit decision In re Bilski, however, the useful-concrete-tangible test was jettisoned.

Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod v. FCC was a 1998 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals case involving the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) enforcement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and the Fifth Amendment. The FCC claimed that the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) had violated the FCC's Equal Employment Opportunity requirements by not hiring enough minorities/women and by requiring a knowledge of Lutheran doctrine in order to be hired to work at its two FM and AM radio stations located in Clayton, Missouri.

Leibovitz v. Paramount Pictures Corp., 137 F.3d 109 (2d Cir. 1998), is an influential Second Circuit fair use case.

Cybersell, Inc. v. Cybersell, Inc. was a trademark infringement case based on the use of an internet service mark. The United States District Court for the District of Arizona was asked to review whether the allegedly infringing use of a service mark in a home page on the World Wide Web suffices for personal jurisdiction in the state where the holder of the mark has its principal place of business. The Cybersell holding illustrated that passive websites (i.e. sites that serve only to publish information, rather than to engage in commercial activity or collect information from a user) do not establish personal jurisdiction outside the state in which they are based.

Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 130 F.3d 1287 (8th Cir. 1997), was the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit in the United States. It was filed in 1988 on behalf of Lois Jenson and other female workers at the Eveleth Taconite mine in Eveleth, Minnesota on the state's northern Mesabi Range, which is part of the Iron Range.