A US Appeals court has thrown out a lawsuit by Yahoo, the world's largest media company, which had sought to overturn a French court's decision barring the sale of Nazi memorabilia on Yahoo's Web site.
In a case that pitted freedom of speech rights enshrined under US law against European anti-hate group statutes, the San Francisco-based US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court ruling that had provided free speech protections to the US company in its overseas operations.
The US appeals court said that because Yahoo had complied "in large measure" with the French court's orders and barred the the sale of Nazi memorabilia from its site in France, Yahoo's free speech petition has become a moot issue.
"Unless and until Yahoo! changes its policy again, and thereby more clearly violates the French court's orders, it is unclear how much is now actually in dispute," the decision by a majority of the appeal court's 11 judges who heard the case.
A Yahoo spokesman said the Sunnyvale, California-based company was aware of the decision and formulating a response.