Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_19-cv-05861/USCOURTS-cand-4_19-cv-05861-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 17:101 Copyright Infringement

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

HUNGERSTATION LLC,

Plaintiff,

v.

FAST CHOICE LLC, et al.,

Defendants.

Case No. 19-cv-05861-HSG 

ORDER ON MOTIONS TO DISMISS 

AND MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY 

INJUNCTION

Re: Dkt. Nos. 12, 23, 35, 45

Before the Court are three motions: (1) Defendant Fast Choice LLC’s motion to dismiss 

for lack of personal jurisdiction and based on forum non conveniens, Dkt. No. 12; (2) Defendant 

Inspiring Trading Apps LLC’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, improper 

service, and failure to state a claim, Dkt. No. 35; and (3) Plaintiff’s motion for preliminary 

injunction, Dkt. No. 23. Because the Court finds that it does not have personal jurisdiction over 

Defendants, the Court GRANTS Defendants’ motions to dismiss and DENIES Plaintiff’s motion 

for preliminary injunction.

I. BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Hungerstation LLC, Defendant Fast Choice LLC d/b/a Pace, and Defendant 

Inspiring Trading Apps LLC d/b/a Swyft are all limited liability companies formed under the laws 

of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Dkt. No. 1 (“Compl.”) ¶¶ 4–6. All parties have their principal 

place of business in Saudi Arabia. Id. 

Plaintiff is one of the leading online food delivery services in Saudi Arabia. Id. ¶ 11. It 

developed three software apps in connection with its food delivery service: (1) a customer-facing 

app, on which customers can order food from local restaurants; (2) a restaurant-facing app, which 

restaurants use to accept customer orders; and (3) a rider-facing app, which couriers use to pick up 

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and deliver the food. Id. ¶ 13. Plaintiff owns the source code for all three apps and has registered 

the copyrighted materials with the U.S. Copyright Office. Id. ¶ 31. It “creates, stores, and updates 

its copyrighted source code” on GitHub servers. Id. ¶ 32. GitHub is a third party based in the 

United States with servers in California, Washington, and Virginia. Id. 

As a result of operating these apps and accumulating data over time, Plaintiff has 

developed “valuable confidential information,” which includes customer databases, restaurant 

databases, key contacts, and marketing strategies. Id. ¶ 14. Its confidential data is stored on

Amazon Web Services, Inc. servers, which are in the United States and controlled through 

Cloudflare, Inc. Id. ¶ 51. Cloudflare is also a U.S.-based company. Id. 

Pace owns and operates a rider-facing food delivery mobile app, and Swyft owns and 

operates a customer-facing food delivery mobile app. Id. ¶¶ 16, 18. Swyft is a direct competitor 

of Plaintiff. Id. ¶ 18. According to the complaint, Pace and Swyft operate financially as one 

entity and “should be treated as alter egos of each other.” Id. ¶¶ 19–29. 

At issue here is the alleged unlawful theft of Plaintiff’s source code and confidential data. 

Plaintiff alleges that Defendants “launched a plan to raid Hungerstation’s intellectual property for 

the benefit of Defendants, who were direct competitors of Hungerstation.” Id. ¶ 43. Specifically, 

Defendants allegedly “attempted to recruit or exploit key members of Hungerstation’s senior 

management team and software development team to either join Defendants ... or to transfer 

confidential information to Defendants.” Id. This purported scheme involved “penetrating 

Hungerstation’s computer servers in the United States in order to steal Hungerstation’s trade 

secrets.” Id. ¶ 44. According to Plaintiff, Defendants’ employees used “their then-valid 

Hungerstation credentials to wrongfully access, copy, and steal Hungerstation’s GitHub 

repositories of copyrighted and proprietary source code,” and “accessed Hungerstation’s 

confidential data” stored on Amazon Web Services. Id. ¶¶ 46, 51. Defendants allegedly stored 

the “copycat source code on GitHub’s U.S. servers.” Id. ¶ 48

Defendants then purportedly “contracted with California-based Apple, Inc. and Google 

LLC, and transmitted executable files created using the infringing source code to those companies 

to be stored on their California-based servers, to distribute Defendant’s infringing apps to smart 

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phone users across the world.” Id. ¶ 50. According to Plaintiff, Defendants “signed terms of 

services and/or other contracts with Apple and Google ... that explicitly contained choice of law 

provisions stating that California laws would govern the agreements.” Id. At the time Plaintiff 

filed the complaint, the apps were allegedly available for download in the United States on 

Apple’s AppStore and GooglePlay. Id.

Based on the allegations, Plaintiff brings six causes of action against Defendants: 

(1) misappropriation of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1836 et 

seq.; (2) misappropriation of trade secrets under California Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Cal. Civ. 

Code § 3426 et seq.; (3) copyright infringement, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.; (4) violation of 

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030 et seq.; (5) violation of California’s 

Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, Cal. Penal Code § 502(c); and (6) unfair 

competition under Cal. Bus. and Prof. Code § 17200 et seq. Id. ¶¶ 67–117 

II. MOTIONS TO DISMISS: PERSONAL JURISDICTION

Because personal jurisdiction is a threshold issue and relevant to the likelihood of success 

factor of a preliminary injunction analysis, the Court first considers whether it has jurisdiction 

over the parties.

1

 

A. Legal Standard

“When a defendant moves to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, the plaintiff bears 

the burden of demonstrating that the court has jurisdiction over the defendant.” Pebble Beach Co. 

v. Caddy, 453 F.3d 1151, 1154 (9th Cir. 2006). When personal jurisdiction is challenged, “the 

district judge has considerable procedural leeway in choosing a methodology for deciding the 

motion.” 5B Charles A. Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1351 (3d 

ed. 2018). The court may rest on the allegations in the pleadings, weigh the contents of affidavits 

and other evidence, or even hold a hearing and resort to oral testimony. Id. Where, as here, the 

motion is based on written materials rather than an evidentiary hearing, Plaintiff need only make a 

prima facie showing of jurisdictional facts. Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler, 579 F.3d 1088, 1094 

 

1 Defendant Swyft presents the same jurisdictional arguments in its opposition to Plaintiff’s 

motion for preliminary injunction. Dkt. No. 36 at 4–11. 

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(9th Cir. 2009), vacated on other grounds, 603 F.3d 1141 (9th Cir. 2010) (citations omitted). 

The court “may not assume the truth of allegations in a pleading which are contradicted by 

affidavit.” CollegeSource, Inc. v. AcademyOne, Inc., 653 F.3d 1066, 1073 (9th Cir. 2011) 

(quotations omitted); see also Amba Mktg. Sys., Inc. v. Jobar Int’l, Inc., 551 F.2d 784, 787 (9th 

Cir. 1977) (plaintiff “could not simply rest on the bare allegations of its complaint, but rather was 

obligated to come forward with facts, by affidavit or otherwise, supporting personal jurisdiction”). 

But, the court must resolve conflicts between the facts contained in the parties’ affidavits in 

plaintiff’s favor. Schwarzenegger v. Fred Martin Motor Co., 374 F.3d 797, 800 (9th Cir. 2004).

B. Discussion

Due process limits a court’s power to “render a valid personal judgment against a 

nonresident defendant.” See World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 291 

(1980). Where a state authorizes “jurisdiction on any basis not inconsistent with the Constitution 

of this state or of the United States,” as does California, see Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 410.10, federal 

courts must determine whether the exercise of jurisdiction over a defendant “comports with the 

limits imposed by federal due process.” Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 126 (2014); see 

also Mavrix Photo, Inc. v. Brand Techs., Inc., 647 F.3d 1218, 1223 (9th Cir. 2011) (“California’s 

long-arm statute . . . is coextensive with federal due process requirements, so the jurisdictional 

analyses under state law and federal due process are the same.”). Due process requires that a 

nonresident defendant have sufficient “‘minimum contacts’ with the forum such that the assertion 

of jurisdiction ‘does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’” Pebble 

Beach, 453 F.3d at 1155 (quoting Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 315 (1945)). 

There are two categories of traditional personal jurisdiction a plaintiff can invoke: general 

and specific. Ranza v. Nike, Inc., 793 F.3d 1059, 1068 (9th Cir. 2015). “If the defendant’s 

activities in the forum are substantial, continuous and systematic, general jurisdiction is available; 

in other words, the foreign defendant is subject to suit even on matters unrelated to his or her 

contacts to the forum.” Doe v. Unocal Corp., 248 F.3d 915, 923 (9th Cir. 2001). The Supreme 

Court has held that the “paradigm forums” for the exercise of general jurisdiction are an 

individual’s domicile and a corporation’s place of incorporation and principal place of business. 

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Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915, 924 (2011); see Daimler, 571 

U.S. at 134. This is in contrast to specific jurisdiction, which “exists when a case arises out of or 

relates to the defendant’s contacts with the forum.” Ranza, 793 F.3d at 1068 (quotations and 

citations omitted). It “depends on an affiliation between the forum and the underlying 

controversy, principally, activity or an occurrence that takes place in the forum State and is 

therefore subject to the State’s regulation.” Id. 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(2), the nationwide jurisdiction provision, provides

another avenue for a federal court to exercise personal jurisdiction if “the defendant is not subject 

to jurisdiction in any state’s courts of general jurisdiction.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(2). Under Rule 

4(k)(2), the focus is on the defendant’s aggregate contacts with the United States as a whole, rather 

than the specific forum. Axiom Foods, Inc. v. Acerchem Int’l, Inc., 874 F.3d 1064, 1072 (9th Cir. 

2017) (citation omitted). 

Plaintiff asserts that this Court has specific jurisdiction over Defendants under both 

traditional principles of specific jurisdiction and Rule 4(k)(2). Dkt. No. 22 at 5; Dkt. No. 42 at 7. 

There is no dispute that the Court does not have general jurisdiction over Defendants. The Court 

addresses each argument in turn. 

i. Evidence Regarding Personal Jurisdiction

In support of its motion to dismiss, Defendant Swyft submitted a declaration from 

Abdulaziz Al Omran, the Managing Director of Swyft. Dkt. No. 35-1 (“Al Omran Decl.”). In his

declaration, Mr. Al Omran explains that the Swyft app is an on-demand delivery service that 

allows users in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to place delivery orders for goods, which include 

cosmetics, bicycle repair kits, and food. Id. ¶ 4. According to Mr. Al Omran, Swyft “does not 

provide services to anyone in the United States, nor has it attempted to do so.” Id. ¶ 5. He further 

elaborates that Swyft does not have property, offices, bank accounts, or employees in the United 

States. Id. Mr. Al Omran also states that Swyft “is unaware of any of its data being stored on 

servers located in the United States.” Id. 

Defendant Pace did not submit any evidence to support the jurisdictional assertions in its 

motion to dismiss, and therefore the Court will not consider the uncorroborated factual allegations

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in Defendant Pace’s motion.2 

Plaintiff submitted a declaration from Rakan Dmairi, the Chief Sales Officer of 

Hungerstation. Dkt. No. 23-2 (“Dmairi Decl.”). According to Mr. Dmairi’s sworn declaration, 

Defendant Pace was aware that GitHub is a U.S.-based company with servers located in 

California, and Pace “independently partnered with GitHub to store Pace’s copycat source code on 

GitHub’s U.S. servers and signed contracts with GitHub that were governed by California law.” 

Id. ¶ 25. Mr. Dmairi also states that Defendants knew Plaintiff’s confidential data was stored on 

“U.S.-based servers,” and Defendants accessed the confidential data stored on the Amazon Web 

Services’ servers. Id. ¶¶ 31–32. Further, Mr. Dmairi asserts that Defendants contracted with 

Apple and Google to store their executable files on Apple and Google’s California-based servers. 

Id. ¶¶ 29, 41. In doing so, Defendants entered into agreements with Apple and Google which, 

“upon information and belief, explicitly contained choice of law provisions stating that California 

laws would govern the agreements.” Id. Defendants’ apps were available for download on 

Apple’s AppStore and Google Play. Id. ¶¶ 30, 41. Google Play removed the applications on 

October 7, 2019. 3 Id. Plaintiff did not submit any evidence controverting Defendant Swyft’s 

statement that Swyft does not provide services to anyone in the United States, or that Swyft does 

not have any property, bank accounts, or employees in the United States. 

With these facts in mind, the Court turns to the jurisdictional analysis. 

ii. Specific Personal Jurisdiction

Under Ninth Circuit caselaw, there are three requirements for a court to exercise specific 

jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant: “(1) the defendant must either ‘purposefully direct his 

activities’ toward the forum or ‘purposefully avail[ ] himself of the privileges of conducting 

activities in the forum’; (2) ‘the claim must be one which arises out of or relates to the defendant’s 

 

2 At the December 11, 2019 hearing on Defendant Pace’s motion, the Court provided Defendant 

Pace with an opportunity to submit evidence corroborating the assertions in its motion, but it 

declined to do so. 

3 Plaintiff filed an administrative motion for leave to file a letter updating the Court on recent 

factual developments relevant to the pending motions. Dkt. No. 45. The Court GRANTS the 

motion. According to the Declaration of Luc Dahlin (counsel for Plaintiff), as of December 10, 

2019, Apple had removed Defendants’ apps from the AppStore, and GitHub had removed 

Defendants’ source code repositories. Dkt. No. 45-1 at ¶ 2. 

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forum-related activities’; and (3) ‘the exercise of jurisdiction must comport with fair play and 

substantial justice, i.e. it must be reasonable.’” Axiom Foods, 874 F.3d at 1068–69 (quoting Dole 

Food Co., Inc. v. Watts, 303 F.3d 1104, 1111 (9th Cir. 2002)). “The plaintiff bears the burden of 

satisfying the first two prongs of the test.” Schwarzenegger, 374 F.3d at 802. If the plaintiff 

meets that burden, “the burden then shifts to the defendant to ‘present a compelling case’ that the 

exercise of jurisdiction would not be reasonable.” Id. (citation omitted). 

For the first requirement, when a case sounds in tort, courts employ the “purposeful 

direction test,” which is also referred to as the “effects” test from Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783 

(1984). Axiom, 874 F.3d at 1069. “[T]he ‘effects’ test requires that the defendant allegedly have 

(1) committed an intentional act, (2) expressly aimed at the forum state, (3) causing harm that the 

defendant knows is likely to be suffered in the forum state.” Dole Food, 303 F.3d at 1111. 

1. Purposeful Direction

Plaintiff argues that Defendants purposefully directed their wrongful acts at California by 

(1) stealing Plaintiff’s copyrighted source code and confidential data from servers they knew were 

located in the United States (owned by GitHub and Amazon Web Services); (2) copying the 

source code onto GitHub servers in the United States; (3) engaging with California-based 

companies (Apple and Google) to “store and distribute the stolen code” on California servers; and 

(4) using “California servers and companies to make its apps available in California and in various 

other countries around the world.” Dkt. No. 22 at 5; Dkt. No. 42 at 7. 

a. Expressly Aimed at Forum State4

To be satisfied, the express aiming inquiry requires “something more” than a foreign act 

with foreseeable effects in the forum state. Washington Shoe Co. v. A-Z Sporting Goods Inc., 704 

F.3d 668, 675 (9th Cir. 2012) (“We have held that Calder ‘cannot stand for the broad proposition 

that a foreign act with foreseeable effects in the forum state always gives rise to specific 

jurisdiction.’” (citation omitted)). “Due process requires that a defendant be haled into court in a 

forum State based on his own affiliation with the State, not based on the ‘random, fortuitous, or 

 

4 Defendants do not appear to dispute that there was an intentional act, satisfying the first factor in 

the Calder effects test. See Dkt. No. 35 at 6–7. 

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attenuated’ contacts he makes by interacting with other persons affiliated with the State.” Walden 

v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 286 (2014) (citations omitted). Here, the main question is whether

Defendants’ interactions with third parties (GitHub, Amazon, Google, and Apple) are sufficient to 

establish that they expressly aimed their conduct at California, or if instead these contacts are too 

random, fortuitous, or attenuated. 

The Court finds that these connections are too fortuitous to establish that Defendants have 

purposefully directed their activities at California such that it would be reasonable to hale 

Defendants into court in this forum. Plaintiff’s central argument for jurisdiction is that Defendants 

accessed servers owned by third parties that happen to be based in or have servers in California. 

But district courts in this circuit have held that the mere location of a third party or its servers is 

insufficient to give rise to personal jurisdiction. See, e.g., Republic of Kazakhstan v. Ketebaev, 

No. 17-CV-00246-LHK, 2017 WL 6539897, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 21, 2017) (“The mere fact that 

Google—the company that owns the servers—is headquartered in California is not enough to 

establish that Khrapunov, a Kazakh citizen who resides in Switzerland, expressly aimed his 

alleged conduct at California.”); Rosen v. Terapeak, Inc., No. CV-15-00112-MWF (EX), 2015 

WL 12724071, at *9 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 28, 2015) (fact that images at issue came from eBay and 

were taken off eBay’s servers located in California was not sufficient to give rise to personal 

jurisdiction); Man-D-Tec, Inc. v. Nylube Products Co., LLC, No. CV-11-1573-PHX-GMS, 2012 

WL 1831521, at *2 (D. Ariz. May 18, 2012) (“If the mere location of a server could create 

personal jurisdiction, any state where a server is located would have personal jurisdiction over any 

user of that server”); Browne v. McCain, 612 F. Supp. 2d 1118, 1124 (C.D. Cal. 2009) (no

jurisdiction over a defendant merely because of relationship with California-based YouTube, as 

presence of YouTube’s servers in California was insufficient to establish personal 

jurisdiction); Doe v. Geller, 533 F. Supp. 2d 996, 1009 (N.D. Cal. 2008) (“Such broad jurisdiction, 

premised solely on the happenstance that many internet companies that are not even parties to 

[the] litigation have offices in Silicon Valley, is unreasonable.”).

5

 

5 There is no evidence that Plaintiff’s source code and confidential data were stored on servers in 

California as opposed to another state. See Dmairi Decl. ¶¶ 6 (Plaintiff’s source code stored on 

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Plaintiff argues that “this case has more compelling facts” than the Ninth Circuit’s 

unpublished opinion in DEX Sys., Inc. v. Deutsche Post AG, 727 F. App’x 276, 278 (9th Cir. Mar. 

13 2018). Dkt. No. 22 at 5; Dkt. No. 42 at 8. The Court disagrees. In DEX, the Ninth Circuit 

found that the district court had specific jurisdiction. DEX, 727 F. App’x at 278. But the key 

factor distinguishing this case is that in DEX, the plaintiff itself had a server in California. Id. at 

278. The fact that the software at issue “was located on DEX’s California server was not merely a 

fortuitous occurrence,” because the “software was located on California servers pursuant to an 

agreement reached by the parties.” Id.; see also id. (“As agreed by the parties, DEX’s server ... 

was located in California”). Here, in contrast, Plaintiff does not have a server in California, nor 

did any of the parties have control over where the identified third parties located their servers. As 

other courts in this circuit have held, the presence of servers in California (which may or may not 

host Plaintiff’s source code or confidential data) is insufficient to find that Defendants expressly 

aimed their conduct at California. That these well-known Silicon Valley technology companies

host client data from all over the world on servers located in California (and elsewhere in the 

United States) is pure happenstance. See Future World Elecs., LLC v. Results HQ, LLC, No. CV 

17-17982, 2018 WL 2416682, at *3 (E.D. La. May 29, 2018) (distinguishing DEX and finding that 

“[h]ere, the location of the server” was “fortuitous,” as there “is no indication that either plaintiff 

or defendants had any control over the server’s location, or that the location had any bearing on 

defendants’ conduct.”). Plaintiff fails to provide, and the Court has not located, any case where 

the location of third-party servers, as opposed to servers affiliated with one of the parties, was 

sufficient to satisfy purposeful direction. 6

In addition, that Defendants stored their own apps and source code on GitHub, Google, and 

Apple servers does not establish that Defendants expressly aimed their conduct at California such 

that California was the “focal point” of Defendants’ actions and the harm suffered. See Axiom 

 

GitHub servers, which “are located in California, Washington, and Virginia”), 8 (Plaintiff’s 

confidential data stored on Amazon Web Services servers “throughout the United States”). 

6 Plaintiff’s other cited case, NetApp, Inc. v. Nimble Storage, Inc., 41 F. Supp. 3d 816, is 

distinguishable for the same reason. See Dkt. No. 22 at 6. In NetApp, the plaintiff’s own systems 

were in California, and the defendant received multiple notices that the plaintiff and the computer 

systems were located in California. NetApp, 41 F. Supp. 3d at 825–26.

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Foods, 874 F.3d at 1070–71. This is even more highlighted by the fact that Defendant Swyft’s

target market is in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. See Al Omran Decl. ¶¶ 4–5; see also Bibiyan v. 

Marjan Television Network, Ltd., No. CV181866DMGMRWX, 2019 WL 422664, at *4 (C.D. 

Cal. Feb. 4, 2019) (that defendant’s app is available on Google and Apple’s store has “no bearing 

on whether Defendant intended to exploit the Persian music video viewership market in 

California”). Nor is it relevant that Defendants entered into agreements governed by California 

law with these third parties. See Rosen, 2015 WL 12724071, at *10 (“The Court is unpersuaded 

that [defendant’s license agreement with eBay, by which it subjected itself to California law,] is a 

jurisdictionally relevant contact that is sufficiently related to either the forum or the claims to 

justify exercising personal jurisdiction.”). Defendants’ agreements are not relevant to the claims 

asserted by Plaintiff here, as Plaintiff is not even a party to the agreements. 

Under Plaintiff’s theory, the Northern District of California always would have jurisdiction 

in any case where a party hosts its data with a Silicon Valley company, even when that company is 

not a party to the litigation. “Federal courts sitting in California could assert personal jurisdiction 

over foreign defendants in wholly foreign disputes.” Doe, 533 F. Supp. 2d at 1009. Here, all

parties were formed under the laws of Saudi Arabia; all parties have their headquarters in Saudi 

Arabia; the apps at issue are for delivery services in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; and Defendants do 

not have any property or employees in the United States. It would be unreasonable to hale 

Defendants into this forum merely because the parties contract with Bay Area technology 

companies to host their data, considering the lack of any other connection to this forum and to the 

United States in general. “The Northern District of California is not an international court of 

internet law.” Id.

7

 

The Court concludes that Plaintiff fails to allege facts showing that Defendants

 

7 The fact that GitHub, Apple, and Google no longer host Defendants’ data does not have any 

legal impact on the jurisdictional analysis. See Dkt. No. 45-1 at ¶ 2. But the Court notes that from 

a pragmatic perspective, this illuminates the fortuitous and attenuated nature of the alleged 

contacts with California. The parties have no control over where these third parties choose to host 

client data, where they choose to locate their headquarters, or how the companies manage their 

client data. Presumably, these companies may choose to take down the data or transfer it from 

California to another server in the United States (or even elsewhere in the world). That the Bay 

Area is a hub for prominent technology companies is not a reflection of purposeful direction. 

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purposefully directed their activities at California.

8

 Because this ground is sufficient to conclude 

that Plaintiff has not established specific personal jurisdiction, the Court need not address the 

remaining factors.

iii. Nationwide Jurisdiction

The Court next turns to Plaintiff’s argument that jurisdiction is appropriate under Rule 

4(k)(2). During oral argument, Plaintiff argued that Rule 4(k)(2) was the easiest pathway to find 

jurisdiction here, given its concession as to the uncertainty of whether its source code was hosted 

on a GitHub server in California as opposed to in Washington or Virginia. Regardless, Plaintiff’s 

invocation of Rule 4(k)(2) does not change the Court’s prior analysis finding that exercise of 

jurisdiction in this case would be unreasonable. 

To establish jurisdiction under Rule 4(k)(2), three requirements must be met: 

First, the claim against the defendant must arise under federal law. 

Second, the defendant must not be subject to the personal jurisdiction 

of any state court of general jurisdiction. Third, the federal court’s 

exercise of personal jurisdiction must comport with due process.

Pebble Beach, 453 F.3d at 1159. “‘The due process analysis under Rule 4(k)(2) is nearly identical 

to traditional personal jurisdiction analysis with one significant difference: rather than considering 

contacts between [the defendant] and the forum state, [the Court] consider[s] contacts with the 

nation as a whole.’” Axiom Foods, 874 F.3d at 1072 (quoting Holland Am. Line Inc. v. Wartsila 

N. Am., Inc., 485 F.3d 450, 462 (9th Cir. 2007)). 

The Ninth Circuit has urged cautious application of Rule 4(k)(2). See Holland Am. Line, 

485 F.3d at 462 (“Indeed, in the fourteen years since Rule 4(k)(2) was enacted, none of our cases 

has countenanced jurisdiction under the rule.”). The Holland court noted that the “few cases in 

which our sister circuits have concluded that Rule 4(k)(2) conferred jurisdiction” involved much 

 

8 Because Defendants did not expressly aim their conduct at California, it is not necessary for the 

Court to address the third factor of the Calder effects test, which requires a showing that 

Defendants’ actions resulted in foreseeable harm in this forum. See Dole, 303 F.3d at 1111. Even 

if Plaintiff could satisfy this prong, foreseeability of injury in a forum alone is not sufficient to 

confer personal jurisdiction in the forum. Axiom Foods, 874 F.3d at 1070; see also Pebble Beach, 

453 F.3d at 1156–58 (“[W]e have warned courts not to focus too narrowly on the test’s third 

prong—the effects prong—holding that ‘something more’ is needed in addition to a mere 

foreseeable effect.”).

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more extensive contacts with the United States. Id. As examples, the Ninth Circuit cited Mwani

v. bin Laden, 417 F.3d 1, 13 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (upholding jurisdiction where defendants had 

engaged in numerous conspiracies to bomb the World Trade Center, the United Nations, and the 

Lincoln and Holland Tunnels), and Adams v. Unione Mediterranea Di Sicurta, 364 F.3d 646, 651 

(5th Cir. 2004) (upholding personal jurisdiction where the defendant had directly insured hundreds 

of claims in the United States), as the rare cases finding jurisdiction under Rule 4(k)(2). Id.

Plaintiff incorporates its prior reasoning under the traditional personal jurisdiction analysis 

to support its position that Defendants have purposefully availed themselves of jurisdiction in the 

United States. Although the first two factors are satisfied, the third factor fails for the same reason 

as discussed in the Court’s traditional jurisdiction analysis. The fact that a third party hosts data 

on its server somewhere in the United States does not amount to a meaningful contact sufficient to 

find that Defendants have purposefully availed themselves of the jurisdiction of the United States.

* * *

The Court finds that Plaintiff has not carried its burden of demonstrating that Defendants 

purposefully directed their activities towards California or the United States, and the Court thus

does not have personal jurisdiction over Defendants. Since the determination that it lacks 

jurisdiction over Defendants is dispositive, the Court need not address the alternative arguments 

presented in Defendants’ motions. The Court GRANTS Defendants’ motions to dismiss for lack 

of personal jurisdiction.

III. MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

Because a district court does not have authority to grant a preliminary injunction when it 

lacks personal jurisdiction over defendants, the Court DENIES Plaintiff’s motion for preliminary

injunction on that basis alone. See Paccar Int’l, Inc. v. Commercial Bank of Kuwait, S.A.K., 757 

F.2d 1058, 1066 (9th Cir. 1985) (vacating order granting preliminary injunction because the 

district court did not have personal jurisdiction); see also Carter v. Reese, No. C 12-5537 MMC, 

2012 WL 5471886, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 9, 2012) (“A district court has no authority to grant 

relief in the form of temporary restraining order and permanent injunction where it has no 

jurisdiction over the parties.”). 

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IV. CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated above, the Court GRANTS Defendants’ motions to dismiss, Dkt.

Nos. 12, 35; DENIES Plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction, Dkt. No. 23; and GRANTS

Plaintiff’s administrative motion, Dkt. No. 45. 

The Court DIRECTS the Clerk to terminate the case. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: 1/13/2020

______________________________________

HAYWOOD S. GILLIAM, JR.

United States District Judge

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