Jurisdiction Over the Violation of Trademarks in Virtual Space in the US Jurisprudence

In the age of electronic commerce, relying upon the territorial protection of trademarks law and facing its violation in the virtual space have become a challenging task. The lack of legislations for analyzing virtual space and the ambiguity over its connection with physical space in the law to determine jurisdiction have prompted the U.S. courts to tackle with the violation of trademarks and to give verdict on them by identifying some criteria in jurisprudence. According to these criteria, an American court accepts its jurisdiction in the virtual space and awards compensation based the state law on the conditions that certain factors exist and certain criteria are realized. By realizing those crideria, the court can extend the law even extra-territorially to damages incurred in a foreign territory. These criteria are: 1. The violation of trademark affects significantly the U.S. trade. 2. The site containing the violated trademark has been launched to target U.S. citizens and to influence its trade. 3. The site actively interactes with the U.S. residents and has caused damages within the country. 4. The accused has benefitted. from its deals and therefore, has exposed himself to the jurisdiction and legal protection of that state. In all these cases, the court determine and execute its personal jurisdiction.