Two French anti-racism groups have retained a prestigious international law firm to fight a lawsuit filed against them by the leading website Yahoo.
The two groups, the International Antiracism and Anti-Semitism League (LICRA) and the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), persuaded a French court in December to issue an order banning Yahoo from selling Nazi memorabilia on the Yahoo France site.
The court also ordered Yahoo to create software that would keep French users from seeing the wares on other Yahoo sites. At the time, Yahoo allowed users to sell such items as SS daggers and empty canisters of Zyklon B, the poisonous gas used in the Holocaust.
In January, Yahoo filed a lawsuit in San Jose, California naming the groups.
In its US suit, the Internet company argued that the French court had no authority to prohibit the sales, because Yahoo was, by its existence on the World Wide Web, not a French company and therefore immune from the French court.
Last month, Yahoo voluntarily announced a ban on Nazi memorabilia on its sites. However, the company is continuing its lawsuit against the French court's ruling and the two civil rights groups, in order to obtain a ruling that would ban the regulation of Internet companies by local governments.
"I think Yahoo is acting irrationally," said Mr Ronald Katz of Coudert Brothers, the international law firm that represented Disney during European anti-trust hearings on the giant AOL-Time Warner merger.
"The two groups Yahoo is suing don't have any connection to the US,'' said Mr Katz. ``And a US court doesn't have jurisdiction over a foreign matter. You don't need a court, you need an army for that.''
Yahoo representatives could not be reached for comment. Mr Katz's motion to dismiss Yahoo's US lawsuit will be heard in April.
AFP