Business  conducted  over  the  internet  (sometimes  referred to generally as “E-commerce”) is growing exponentially.  A recent Nielson report estimated that one-third of the world’s population  is  online,  an  increase  of  528%  since  2002.2   E-commerce  sales  in  the American  retail  industry  reached $194 billion in 2011, an increase of nearly 3,800% since 1999.3   E-commerce presents unique challenges to courts attempting to apply rules and legal concepts developed in the last century when business was traditionally conducted in person, through personal mail, or even over telegraphs and telephone wires.  Personal jurisdiction is perhaps one of the more common and esoteric of those concepts, and transactions conducted through cyberspace do not neatly fit into the established frameworks for analyzing when a state court’s exercise of jurisdiction over a defendant is constitutionally permissible.

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