Flatsix, LLC v. Sylejmani
- Beth Freeman
- 5:23-cv-02289
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Flatsix v. Sylejmani, Judge Demarchi allowed email service on the foreign defendant and reset the case-management conference.
Flatsix, LLC may serve Blerim Sylejmani by email at blerimss@gmail.com; the order also set deadlines for proof of service and case management.
What happened
Flatsix, LLC sued Blerim Sylejmani, alleging that he copied videos from Flatsix’s website and uploaded them to YouTube without permission. Flatsix brought claims for copyright infringement, breach of contract, and unfair competition, and said it could not serve Sylejmani at the physical address he provided because the address appeared to be fake.
The court decided that email service was allowed under the federal rule governing service outside the United States. Sylejmani had recently used the requested email address to contact Flatsix about the dispute, making email reasonably likely to notify him of the lawsuit. The court also found that email service was not prohibited by the international service agreement involving Albania.
Judge Virginia K. Demarchi granted Flatsix’s motion to serve Sylejmani by email at blerimss@gmail.com. She directed Flatsix to file proof of service by September 7, 2023, and reset the initial case-management conference for November 7, 2023, with the parties’ joint statement due October 31, 2023.
The detailed version
- Flatsix, LLC v. Sylejmani · No. 5:23-cv-02289
- Beth Freeman
- Aug. 31, 2023
Background
Flatsix, LLC sued Blerim Sylejmani, asserting claims for copyright infringement, breach of contract, and unfair competition. According to the complaint, Sylejmani copied original videos from Flatsix’s website and uploaded them to his YouTube channel without permission. After Flatsix asked YouTube to remove the videos, Sylejmani responded that he owned the rights to them. That response included his full name, a physical address in Tirana, Albania, and the email address blerimss@gmail.com. He also emailed Flatsix’s founder from that address.
Flatsix said it was unable to serve Sylejmani at the physical address because the address appeared to be fake. It therefore asked for permission to serve him by email under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(f)(3), which allows a court to direct service outside the United States by a method that is not prohibited by an international agreement.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that Rule 4(f)(3) does not require a party to try other service methods first. The method must be court-directed, must not violate an international agreement, and must be reasonably calculated to notify the defendant about the case and give him an opportunity to respond.
The court noted that Albania is a party to the Hague Convention on Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents and had not objected to the relevant provisions. The court found persuasive other decisions concluding that email service did not violate the Hague Convention. It also found that the requested email address was reasonably likely to reach Sylejmani because he had apparently used it to contact Flatsix about the dispute as recently as April 2023. Because the physical address appeared to be fake, the court found email to be the method most likely to notify him.
Ruling
Judge Virginia K. Demarchi granted Flatsix’s motion for permission to serve Sylejmani by email at blerimss@gmail.com. The court directed Flatsix to file proof of service no later than September 7, 2023. It also stated that the 90-day service deadline in Rule 4(m) does not apply to serving an individual in a foreign country. Finally, the court reset the initial case-management conference for November 7, 2023, at 1:30 p.m. by Zoom and required the parties to file a joint case-management statement by October 31, 2023.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.