The resuscitation of a proposed data privacy class action against Shopify by a US appeals court may facilitate the assertion of jurisdiction over internet-based platforms by US courts.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 10-1 that the Canadian e-commerce company could be sued in California for gathering personally identifiable information from customers who shop on California retailers' websites.

California citizen Brandon Briskin claimed that when he purchased sportswear from the website I Am Becoming, Shopify put cookies—tracking software—on his iPhone without his permission and utilized his information to build a profile that it could provide to other retailers.

Shopify said that since it operates nationwide and did not target California with its actions, it should not be sued there. Briskin could file a lawsuit in Delaware, New York, or Canada, according to the Ottawa-based business.

The complaint should be dismissed, according to a lower court judge and a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit. However, the full appeals court ruled that Shopify "expressly aimed" its actions toward California.

According to Briskin's attorney, Matt McCrary, the court strengthened accountability for online businesses by dismissing the claim that "a company is jurisdictionally 'nowhere' as it does business 'everywhere.'

Briskin was supported by a bipartisan coalition of 30 states and Washington, D.C. They stated that they required the capacity to enforce their own consumer protection rules against businesses that use the internet to access local marketplaces.

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A broad grant of jurisdiction would hurt back-end service providers whose software is used globally, according to the US Chamber of Commerce, which backed Shopify.

Dissident Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan criticized the "traveling cookie rule" set forth by the majority, arguing that it "impermissibly manufactures jurisdiction wherever the plaintiff goes."

Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and nine western US states are all part of the 9th Circuit.