Opinion ID: 4523985
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Market Exploitation

Text: XMission also argues that the district court had personal jurisdiction over Fluent under a market-exploitation theory. We have held that a defendant purposefully directs activities into the forum State if it continuously and deliberately exploits the forum State’s market. See Old Republic, 877 F.3d at 905–06. “Factors suggesting purposeful direction based on forum state market exploitation include: (a) high sales volume and large customer base and revenues and (b) extensive nationwide advertising or ads targeting the forum state.” Id. at 915. XMission focuses its market-exploitation argument on the $3 million in revenue from Utah customers apparently received by Fluent during the period that the offending emails were sent. But even if that revenue establishes purposeful direction (an issue we need not resolve), XMission had to provide adequate evidence of the remaining requirement for specific jurisdiction—namely, that its alleged injuries “arise out of or relate to those activities.” Burger King, 471 U.S. at 472 (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, XMission had to show that Fluent’s $3 million in Utah revenue reflected a sufficient “affiliation between the forum and the underlying controversy.” was served. See 4A Wright & Miller § 1069 at 126–27. This circuit has not weighed in on the debate. And we need not resolve the issue here, as XMission’s argument is based on contacts after the complaint was filed and then served two days later. 27 Bristol-Myers Squibb, 137 S. Ct. at 1780 (internal quotation marks omitted). It failed to do so. To begin with, the district court ruled that XMission had not “shown in its submissions than any of [the $3 million in] revenue is connected in any way to Fluent’s conduct which forms the basis for the allegations in the complaint and the claims that are asserted in this case. In fact, as [XMission] candidly acknowledged in argument[,] nobody knows the source of those revenues from Utah for Fluent, at least not on the record before us.” J.A., Vol. 3 at 656. We agree with the district court. XMission argues that the $3 million must have arisen from the offending emails because “Fluent disavows any other business activity in the forum.” Aplt. Br. at 23. We are not persuaded. For one thing, there is no evidence in the record that Fluent obtained any revenue from any of the offending emails. Perhaps (although nothing in the record supports this) Fluent receives some money from the companies whose names appear in the emails when a recipient of the email purchases an advertised product or service from one of the companies (publishers are compensated by Fluent if this occurs). But there is no evidence that any recipient of the offending emails made such a purchase. And even if it might suffice for personal jurisdiction if Fluent earned significant revenue by selling consumer data obtained from recipients of offending emails who entered their personal data (an issue we need not decide), there is nothing in the record indicating that even one recipient of the offending emails provided such information, or even opened an email and clicked on the contained link. 28 XMission ignores the screenshot of Fluent’s website that it placed in the record. The customers solicited by the website are clearly businesses that have a product or service to sell. Those customers pay for Fluent’s services in helping them market what they have to offer. Thus, it is more than plausible, and fully consistent with the record before us, that the $3 million in revenue from Utah came from a source unrelated to this suit: Utah businesses who decided to obtain Fluent’s services to expand their markets. We therefore reject the argument that personal jurisdiction over Fluent in this case can be based on Fluent’s $3 million in revenue from Utah customers. See Madara v. Hall, 916 F.2d 1510, 1518 (11th Cir. 1990) (Florida courts lacked jurisdiction over an out-of-state musical entertainer in a libel suit because defendant’s exploitation of the Florida market through recording sales and concert performances had no relation to the alleged libel uttered in New York). XMission also argues that personal jurisdiction can be based on Fluent’s advertising. It refers to the emails delivered through its servers as part of an extensive advertising campaign by Fluent. But the emails did not market Fluent’s services. There is no evidence that they were designed to attract customers for Fluent or in fact did so. Moreover, for the reasons given in the prior section of this opinion, the emails could not be said to “target[] the forum state.” Old Republic, 877 F.3d at 915 (describing one factor under the market-exploitation theory as “extensive nationwide advertising or ads targeting the forum state”). We are not persuaded that the offending emails created personal jurisdiction over Fluent in Utah under the advertising component of the marketexploitation theory. 29