Search Tips:
About Advanced Search
Use this form to search all Internet Law & Regulation document types (Cases, Digests, Pleadings, Laws & Policy, Analysis & Perspective, News), across all Topics, or make selections to confine a search to one or more document type(s) or topical area(s).

Word or phrase in document title
Use this field to narrow your search to documents with particular words or names in the document title. Party names in court cases are not abbreviated. You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. If a phrase contains a noise word, your search will skip over that word when searching for it. Use connector, wildcard and stemming tools to fine-tune your results.

Examples: America Online (not "AOL")
  Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (not "ICANN")
  American Civil Liberties Union (not "ACLU")
  Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (not "ACPA")




Word or phrase
Use this field to narrow your search to documents including a word or phrase within any part of the document, including document title, text, footnotes or appendices. You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. If a phrase contains a noise word, your search will skip over that word when searching for it. Use connector, wildcard and stemming tools to fine-tune your results.

Examples: fair use
  e-mail or email
  infringement and sucks
  COPA and pornography


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Documents to search
This feature allows you to search all ILR document types simultaneously, or to confine a search to one or more document types.
  • Cases: The Cases database contains the full text of all U.S. court and agency decisions affecting the Internet. Pertinent final rules issued by federal agencies are also included. International coverage extends to selected cases from English-speaking venues (such as Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and India), as well as English-language decisions from the European Union. Select cases from non-English speaking countries (such as France and Germany) are provided in PDF format. The Cases database also includes select arbitration decisions issued in accordance with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
  • Case Digests: Case Digests are Pike & Fischer's exclusive summaries of the holdings or actions taken in court and agency decisions. Most decisions in the ILR cases database have digests. Digests simplify research by allowing the researcher to review quickly all of the decisions that address a particular topic, such as spam, workplace privacy, or peer-to-peer file sharing.
  • Pleadings: The Pleadings database contains the full text of notable complaints, motions, and appellate briefs filed with U.S. courts and agencies. Some larger documents are provided in PDF format only.
  • Laws & Policy: The Laws & Policy database contains the full text of pertinent laws, regulations, and policy papers from U.S. federal and state governments, foreign countries, and private organizations. Relevant legislative and regulatory history is also included. Coverage extends to documents issued by entities such as the European Union, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Some documents are provided in PDF format only. Documents protected by U.S. or foreign copyright laws are provided via a hyperlink to the source, so the full text is not part of ILR's database.
  • Analysis & Perspective: The Analysis & Perspective database contains in-depth articles written by distinguished attorneys and law professors who specialize in Internet law. Topical essays, which serve as comprehensive overviews of each of ILR's eight Topics, are updated annually by our authors. Other articles are not updated.
  • News: The News database contains brief articles covering legal, legislative, and Internet-related business developments written by Pike & Fischer's legal editors and experts from The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.


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Topics
Use this field to restrict your search to one or more of ILR's eight topical areas:
  • Criminal Liability (CR): includes coverage of computer crimes, search and seizure, and sentencing issues. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to online pornography laws, the No Electronic Theft Act, and the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime.
  • Freedom of Speech/Content Regulation (FS): includes coverage of the First Amendment, online defamation, filtering and blocking content, indecency and obscenity, and third-party liability issues. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Communications Decency Act, the Child Online Protection Act, and the Children's Internet Protection Act.
  • Intellectual Property (IP): includes coverage of the protections afforded to copyrights and trademarks online, Internet patents, and trade secrets. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, and the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
  • Internet Commerce (IC): includes coverage of e-mail marketing, clickwrap licensing, electronic signatures, online sales and business practices, electronic banking, provision of Internet service, computer trespass, and domain name registration. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the CAN-SPAM Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and the European Directive on Electronic Commerce.
  • Jurisdiction & Procedure (JU): includes coverage of long-arm jurisdiction, venue, service of process, choice of law, and electronic evidence. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Zippo test, the Brussels Convention, and the Hague Convention on International Jurisdiction.
  • Privacy & Security (PR): includes coverage of online anonymity, the collection and use of personal identifying information, workplace privacy, electronic government, encryption, spyware, hacking, and the interception of electronic correspondence. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and the EU Privacy Directive.
  • Taxation (TX): includes coverage of Internet-related state, federal, and international taxation. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Internet Tax Freedom Act, Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act, and the Streamlined Sales Tax Project.
  • Telecommunications (TC): includes coverage of VoIP, reciprocal compensation, broadband access and other issues regulated by state, federal, and international authorities. Use this topic to search rules, regulations, and decisions pertaining to the Federal Communications Commission and similar regulatory bodies.

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Deciding body
Use this field when you know the court, agency, or governmental entity that issued a particular document, or if you're looking for a document from a particular jurisdiction.

Examples: Second Circuit or 2d Cir
  Copyright Office
  106th Congress
  Australia



Citation
Use this field if you know the West or ILR citation for a particular case, or the common citation for a Laws & Policy document.

Examples of West citations: 351 F3d 1229
  2003 WL 22838094
  799 NE2d 916
 
Examples of ILR citations: 15 ILR (P&F) 127
  2003 ILRWeb (P&F) 3221
 
Examples of citations for Laws & Policy documents: Pub. L. No. 106-113
  66 FR 38226
  95/46/EC



Digest classification number
Digest classification numbers correspond to Pike & Fischer's exclusive digests, or summaries, of the holdings or actions taken in court and agency decisions. Digests are organized by topic, as indicated by the two-letter abbreviation preceding each number. Use this field to restrict your search to Cases with a certain digest classification number by typing the desired number or numbers in the box, or click on the Digest Classification Table link to see the entire list of digest topics and numbers.

Examples: FS 5.3
  IC 4
  IP 2.5.2


Digest Classification Table
This feature allows you to browse through a list of digest topics and restrict your search to specific topics. Click on a general topic (such as Intellectual Property) to see an expanded list of specific digest topics. Click on the box next to the topic(s) you wish to search, and click ADD TO MY SEARCH. Your selections will appear in the Digest classification number field. Your search results will then be restricted to Cases digested under those topics.

If you know the digest number you wish to search, you can bypass the Digest Classification Table feature and enter that number in the Digest classification number field on the search form, as described above.

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Date
This field allows you to search for a document by its date or to restrict your search results to a certain date range.

Using Connectors
Your search may consists of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as and and or that indicate the relationship between them.

Examples: apple and pear « Both words must be present
  apple or pear « Either word can be present
  apple w/5 pear « Apple must occur within 5 words of pear
  apple not w/5 pear « Apple must not occur within 5 words of pear
  apple and not pear « Only apple must be present


If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange juice could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).

Noise words, such as if and the, are ignored in searches, but hyphens are not (e-mail will produce results only for e-mail, not email) Use the OR Connector for multiple spellings (e-mail or email).

» More about connectors   

Using Wildcards ( * and ?)
A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word.

Examples: appl* « would match apple, application, etc.
  *cipl* « would match principle, participle, etc.
  appl? « would match apply and apple but not apples.
  ap*ed « would match applied, approved, etc


Note that use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word may slow search performance.


Using Stemming
You may use the ~ character to extend or stem your search to cover grammatical variations on a word.

Examples: test~ « would also find testing
  appl~ « would also find applying, applies, and apply


» More search tips  

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