The trial concerns sales of Nazi memorabilia conducted on the US site’s auction pages. The same facts are the subject of an ongoing civil dispute in the US courts. According to media reports, Timothy Koogle faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of almost €46,000 if found guilty under the French laws that forbid the incitement of racial hatred.
In November 2000, a French judge ordered Yahoo! to block access by French nationals to auction sites hosted on yahoo.com that sold Nazi memorabilia such as daggers, flags, stamps and coins from the Third Reich. The company had banned such auctions from its French site, yahoo.fr, to comply with French law. However, it argued that its US site should not be bound by French law. French anti-racism groups disagreed, as did the French judge before whom they brought the case.
Subsequently, Yahoo! won a declaration from a US judge in November 2001 that, in effect, said Yahoo! could legally ignore the French ruling. That ruling is now being appealed by the French anti-racism groups.