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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

How do you prevent sales in the US if it's only sold online? They can't order blocking using geolocation since the company is in Sweden... now I'm curious.

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[I'm not saying any of this is right, just pointing out how it's done]

(1) You go after the companies collecting the money (Visa etc) and delivering the app (Google, Apple). These very much have physical offices and principals in the US.

(2) You arrest people who dare to fly through/over/near the US. See: legal UK gambling companies.

(3) You attempt to extradite anyone not caught by (1) or (2), if necessary pushing for one-sided extradition and IP laws to do so.

In response...

1) Yes, also I guess they could order ISPs to block the website, but I don't know if there is any precedent for this.

2) No, patent infringement is not a crime

3) No, patent infringement is not a fellony (or crime).

If there was a Default Judgement against them then violating it may be a contempt of court, which may be a crime - anyone know if that's the case?

Edit: Wikipedia says "Contempt of court in a civil suit is generally not considered to be a criminal offense".

I don't know US law, but is this http://www.quizlaw.com/patents/what_are_the_penalties_for_pa... correct? You see, if there's only monetary penalties and company is sued then no individal is in danger of any sort. I mean (2) and (3) often came around in such discussions, so I have to ask: is anybody ever arrested in US and thrown in jail when that somebody's company potentially owns money to somebody. Because at least in Europe I'm not aware of cases even when some individual owns money to somebody and he can be arested - the only method of extracting money out of somebody is seizing the assets. Realistically (1) is the only thing you can do as patent owner. All you can do is try to prevent sales in US. But still, Swedish company can not break any US law.

The U.S. specifically forbids debtor's prison. You cannot be thrown in jail simply for owing money to someone. European countries copied this right from the U.S. when they got around to modernizing their legal systems.

Not American, but can't you be jailed for contempt of court?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jailed-for--280--the-return-of...

http://farquharlaw.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/debtors-prison-e...

Not paying a judgement against you is not contempt of court.

In the Yahoo Article, the woman arrested failed to show up to multiple court hearings, despite receive notice at the proper address. The fact that the court hearings related to a debt was incidental. Blame shoddy journalism.

The second one, is a blog post, which actually talks about something entirely different from a debtor's prison. It refers to a "debtor's exam", which is a fancy way of saying that your finances are examined to see if you can afford to pay the debt. No prison time involved. Intrusive maybe, but warranted if you haven't paid the debt at issue.

Plenty of Judges treat not paying a judgement against you as contempt of court. Even though it is not supposed to happen, it often does.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/opinion/06mon4.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/return-of-debtors-...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870439650457620...

Debtor's prison is alive and well in America.

> How do you prevent sales in the US if it's only sold online?

Just preventing sales from customers in the US app store would be a lot of damage. Google and Apple already have different products available according to country of origin. Billing addresses can also be easily checked.

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