Intellectual Property Law

Judge Reverses Wikileaks Injunction; URL is Back Up

By Cynthia Brumfield

On Friday, U.S. District Court Jeffrey White reversed his earlier decision to issue an injunction against Wikileaks (decision here). Technically, that earlier decision forced the site's domain registrar Dynadot to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name.

Judge White's decision follows the submission of an amicus curiae submitted by a group of free speech advocates, including The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Although Judge White said that these "friends of the court" don't yet have the right to appear as intervenors in the case, they nonetheless raised some important First Amendment issues.

He said that the injunction "raises issues regarding possible infringement of protection afforded to the public by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution." Moreover, because Wikileaks is still available on the Internet via its IP address and mirror sites, the injunction did not achieve its purpose.

Wikileaks published documents regarding a Cayman Islands bank Julius Baer Bank and Trust Company, documents that Julius Baer said were stolen and were posted in violation of banking laws, among other things. Judge White earlier issued a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction against Wikileaks based solely on Julius Baer's contentions. Wikileaks was not represented, and still seems to have murky representation, before the court.

The court will take up the matter further in motions due March 14 and a hearing on May 16. In the meantime, Wikileaks.org is back up and running.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on March 02, 2008 (boomark / email).