Dmarcian, Inc. v. DMARC Advisor BV

USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 1 of 30 PUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 23-1790 DMARCIAN, INC., Plaintiff – Appellee, v. DMARC ADVISOR BV, f/k/a dmarcian Europe BV, Defendant – Appellant. No. 25-1084 DMARCIAN, INC., Plaintiff – Appellee, v. DMARC ADVISOR BV, f/k/a dmarcian Europe BV, Defendant – Appellant. Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina at Asheville. Martin K. Reidinger, District Judge. (1:21−cv−00067−MR) Argued: May 7, 2026 Decided: July 10, 2026 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 2 of 30 Before WILKINSON and WYNN, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit Judge. Affirmed in part and dismissed in part by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Wynn and Senior Judge Keenan joined. ARGUED: Matthew Aaron Hughes, FOX ROTHSCHILD LLP, Greenville, South Carolina, for Appellant. Pamela Suzanne Duffy, ELLIS & WINTERS, LLP, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Gregory G. Holland, Greensboro, North Carolina, Matthew Nis Leerberg, FOX ROTHSCHILD LLP, Raleigh, North Carolina; Samuel B. Hartzell, WOMBLE BOND DICKINSON (US) LLP, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. Tyler C. Jameson, ELLIS & WINTERS, LLP, Greensboro, North Carolina; David A. Dorey, BLANK ROME LLP, Wilmington, Delaware, for Appellee. 2 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 3 of 30 WILKINSON, Circuit Judge: This appeal involves a cross-border intellectual property dispute between two software companies. dmarcian, Inc. (dInc), an American company with headquarters in North Carolina, alleges that DMARC Advisor BV (dBV), a Dutch company, stole its brand name, software code, and customers. The case was last before us in 2023. See dmarcian, Inc. v. dmarcian Eur. BV, 60 F.4th 119 (4th Cir. 2023). dBV argued last time that it was not subject to United States law. As it saw things, the alleged theft took place in the Netherlands, not the United States. We rejected that argument. Wherever the alleged theft took place, we held that it had effects in the United States that brought it within the reach of United States law. dBV now makes the argument again, contending that the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., 600 U.S. 412 (2023) should change our answer. We reject dBV’s argument again. Abitron shifts our focus from effects to conduct, but dBV’s alleged theft involved significant conduct in the United States too. The new rules in Abitron do not allow dBV to escape liability. In the modern world, intellectual property theft often cannot be confined to a single sovereign. An actor in the Netherlands may traffic in American trademarks and trade secrets as if there were no national borders or ocean between them. Whether the effects of its conduct are under scrutiny, as before Abitron, or the conduct itself is under scrutiny, as now, the fundamental question remains whether the actor has sufficient interrelationships with the United States to make it an appropriate subject of our law. 3 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 4 of 30 The district court’s second amended preliminary injunction, which is justified by dBV’s conduct in the United States, comports with Abitron. We affirm the injunction and dismiss the remainder of dBV’s appeal. I. The underlying facts of this case were set out in our 2023 opinion. It remains now, as it was then, a case about “a broken business relationship” between dInc and dBV. dmarcian, 60 F.4th at 128. This appeal, however, involves two new sets of issues. A. When dInc filed suit in North Carolina, it brought a litany of claims. dBV, it said, had breached the parties’ contract and committed more than a dozen business torts and intellectual property violations. The district court found that dInc was likely to prevail on its copyright infringement, trademark infringement, trade secret misappropriation, and tortious interference claims. It thus issued a preliminary injunction against dBV. On appeal, dBV argued that the preliminary injunction impermissibly sought to apply United States and North Carolina law to its activities abroad. We disagreed, explaining that the injunction was justified largely by the domestic effects of dBV’s conduct. dBV had created a website that featured dInc’s name and logo, the likenesses of dInc employees, and the identities of dInc customers. It had used this website to sell the same software product as dInc. The website had not merely reached American customers by accident. To the contrary, dBV placed a button on the website directed to customers in “the Americas,” it sent messages to American customers, and it convinced at least one American company, Clarizen, to switch from dInc’s software product to dBV’s. We 4 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 5 of 30 affirmed the preliminary injunction because these effects in the United States were sufficient under then-binding precedent to bring dBV within the reach of United States law. See dmarcian, 60 F.4th at 138–43. Only a few months later, in Abitron, the Supreme Court announced a new set of rules governing the territorial reach of intellectual property law. See 600 U.S. at 417–23. For unrelated reasons, the district court dismissed dInc’s copyright claim. In response to both developments, the district court modified its preliminary injunction. The new injunction, labeled the second amended preliminary injunction, was intended to conform with Abitron and reflect that dInc no longer had a likelihood of success (or any chance of success) on its copyright claim. See dmarcian, Inc. v. DMARC Advisor BV, No. 1:21-cv- 67, 2024 WL 5188766, at *3–6 (W.D.N.C. Dec. 20, 2024). Under the terms of the second amended preliminary injunction, which remains in effect, dBV was prohibited from doing the following: (1) providing services to any customers located outside of Europe, Africa, or Russia . . .; (2) providing access to any of its websites to IP addresses from countries outside of Europe, Africa, or Russia. . . .; (3) making changes to the trade secret source code . . .; (4) using [dInc’s] trademark in any manner in the United States or on any websites which are accessible to IP addresses from the United States, unless such use is accompanied by a [disclaimer]. . . .; (5) displaying any website with the “dmarcian” name which is accessible to IP addresses from the United States, unless that website includes a [disclaimer]. . . .; (6) redirecting, encouraging, or allowing any customer to change its payment recipient from [dInc] to [dBV]. . . .; (7) making any public statement about [dInc] except as expressly allowed or directed herein. J.A. 2069–72. 5 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 6 of 30 dBV now appeals the second amended preliminary injunction. B. dInc is not the only party to this troubled relationship that believes it has been wronged. In the Netherlands, a reciprocal lawsuit brought by dBV charges dInc with misconduct. After dBV filed its Dutch lawsuit, dInc asked the Dutch court to impose a stay pending the outcome of the American lawsuit. dInc pointed to a provision of Dutch law intended to prevent dueling suits over the same subject matter across national borders. In response, dBV told the Dutch court that no stay was warranted because the two suits addressed sufficiently distinct subject matter. dBV also said that, even if the subject matter of the two suits overlapped, the Dutch suit should take priority because it was filed first. The Dutch court agreed and declined to enter a stay. Back in North Carolina, the district court took issue with what had transpired in the Netherlands. It concluded that dBV’s arguments to the Dutch court had misrepresented the subject matter and start date of the American litigation. As a remedial measure, it ordered dBV to file a document with the Dutch court providing a corrected account (“the correction order”). See dmarcian, Inc. v. DMARC Advisor BV, No. 1:21-cv-67, 2023 WL 4223536, at *9–10 (W.D.N.C. June 27, 2023). dBV filed the document. As a result, the Dutch court reversed its prior decision and stayed its proceedings. The district court in North Carolina nevertheless concluded that dBV had not filed the document in the manner directed by the correction order, so it held dBV in civil contempt and ordered dBV to pay dInc $400,000 (“the contempt order”). See 6 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 7 of 30 dmarcian, Inc. v. DMARC Advisor BV, No. 1:21-cv-67, 2024 WL 5193519, at *11 (W.D.N.C. Dec. 20, 2024). dBV now appeals both the correction order and the contempt order. 1 II. We begin with dBV’s appeal of the second amended preliminary injunction. We have appellate jurisdiction over the injunction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). We review it for abuse of discretion, examining factual findings for clear error and legal conclusions de novo. Centro Tepeyac v. Montgomery Cnty., 722 F.3d 184, 188 (4th Cir. 2013). dBV’s primary contention is that the injunction runs afoul of the new extraterritoriality rules announced in Abitron. According to dBV, it did not engage in sufficient conduct in the United States to justify the application of United States law. dBV’s secondary contention is that the injunction violates the specificity requirements in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(d)(1). We address each contention in turn. A. The extraterritoriality rules in Abitron are new in several ways. The old rules came from Steele v. Bulova Watch Co., 344 U.S. 280 (1952). Under Steele, the Lanham Act’s prohibitions on trademark infringement and unfair competition usually applied if a defendant’s conduct had “effects” in the United States, even if that The district court also held dBV’s attorney in contempt and suspended him from 1 practicing law in the Western District of North Carolina. The attorney’s appeal of the contempt order is addressed in a separate opinion. See dmarcian, Inc. v. Pressly McAuley Millen, No. 25-1085, --- F.4th --- (4th Cir. 2026). 7 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 8 of 30 conduct occurred abroad. Id. at 286; see also, e.g., Nintendo of Am., Inc. v. Aeropower Co., Ltd., 34 F.3d 246, 250 (4th Cir. 1994) (applying Steele with a three-part test focused on “effects on commerce within the United States”). In the decades after Steele, the Supreme Court developed a more comprehensive two-step extraterritoriality inquiry. The inquiry is grounded in the presumption against extraterritoriality, a canon of statutory construction which counsels that “federal laws will be construed to have only domestic application” “[a]bsent clearly expressed congressional intent to the contrary.” RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Cmty., 579 U.S. 325, 335 (2016). At step one of the inquiry, the Court asks whether the statutory provision at issue “gives a clear, affirmative indication that it applies extraterritorially.” Id. at 337. If so, the provision may apply extraterritorially. If not, the provision may only apply domestically. In the latter scenario, the Court proceeds to step two to determine whether the case at hand “involves a permissible domestic application” of the provision or “an impermissible extraterritorial application.” Id. The case involves a permissible domestic application “[i]f the conduct relevant to the statute’s focus occurred in the United States.” Id. The Court proceeded to apply this two-step inquiry to several statutory provisions. See, e.g., Morrison v. Nat’l Austl. Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247, 265–67 (2010) (Securities Exchange Act of 1934); RJR Nabisco, 579 U.S. at 337–38 (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)); WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp., 585 U.S. 407, 412–13 (2018) (Patent Act); Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe, 593 U.S. 628, 632–33 (2021) (Alien Tort Statute). Then, in Abitron, the Court “put aside” Steele and applied the two-step inquiry to the Lanham Act too. Abitron, 600 U.S. at 422. 8 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 9 of 30 Pursuant to Abitron, two provisions of the Lanham Act—15 U.S.C. § 1114(1)(a) and § 1125(a)(1)—no longer apply extraterritorially. The conduct relevant to the focus of these provisions, which must occur domestically before the Act may apply, is “infringing use in commerce” of a trademark. Abitron, 600 U.S. at 422. Finally, Steele’s effects- focused test is no longer good law. B. Although Abitron is new, the tensions it reconciles are longstanding. Congress, if it wishes, may legislate “beyond the territorial boundaries of the United States.” EEOC v. Arabian Am. Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 248 (1991). When it does so, however, it risks causing “international discord.” RJR Nabisco, 579 U.S. at 335. Other nations may see the application of United States law in their territory as a violation of their sovereignty, and businesses may find it challenging to comply with overlapping or even conflicting legal regimes. These risks are especially acute in the context of intellectual property law, which is generally territorial. A trademark has “a separate existence in each sovereign territory in which it is registered or legally recognized as a mark.” Abitron, 600 U.S. at 426 (quoting 5 J. Thomas McCarthy, Trademarks and Unfair Competition § 29:1, at 29–4 to 29–5 (5th ed. 2023)). Patents and copyrights depend on national borders too, and “[f]oreign law may embody different policy judgments” than American law about the strength of protection they should be accorded. Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 455 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). If United States intellectual property law sought to rule the world, it would quickly bump up against other regimes. 9 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 10 of 30 At the same time, businesses today operate seamlessly across national borders. There are few more attractive markets than the United States, which promises a large consumer base and a judicial system that affords stability to commercial transactions. If foreign companies could operate in the United States and escape the reach of American intellectual property law by virtue of their national origin—or by virtue of their intermingled domestic and foreign operations—American companies would be left defenseless against even the most blatant acts of theft. This vulnerability would violate the fundamental promise of our laws “that the courthouse door is open to [American companies] when their intellectual property is misused.” dmarcian, 60 F.4th at 147. Abitron carefully balances these competing interests. While purely foreign conduct is now shielded from the Lanham Act, foreign actors who enter American markets and steal American intellectual property are not. “[D]ue regard” is given “both to international duty and convenience, and to the rights of [our] own citizens.” Hilton v. Guyot, 159 U.S. 113, 164 (1895). The balance struck by Abitron echoes that struck by the law of personal jurisdiction. When a defendant has “minimum contacts” with a forum, he may be haled into its courts. Fuld v. Pal. Liberation Org., 606 U.S. 1, 12 (2025) (quoting World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 291 (1980)). A corporate defendant establishes such minimum contacts by “purposefully avail[ing] itself of the privilege of conducting” business there. Id. at 13 (citing Ford Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 592 U.S. 351, 359 (2021)). In a similar way, a business based abroad that purposefully avails itself of American markets opens itself up to liability under American intellectual property law. 10 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 11 of 30 C. When this case is considered in light of Abitron, dInc continues to have a likelihood of success on the merits of its trademark, trade secret, and tortious interference claims. 1. dInc’s trademark infringement claim was brought under 15 U.S.C. § 1114(1)(a), one of the same provisions of the Lanham Act at issue in Abitron. Abitron made clear that this provision only reaches a defendant if he has committed an “infringing use in commerce, as the Act defines it,” in the United States. 600 U.S. at 422. The Act defines an infringing use as a “use in commerce . . . in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of any goods or services” in a manner “likely to cause confusion.” 15 U.S.C. § 1114(1)(a). This definition contains three components. The first, “use in commerce,” means that “the mark is being used in commerce in the constitutional sense.” Radiance Found., Inc. v. NAACP, 786 F.3d 316, 323 (4th Cir. 2015). 2 The second and third, “in connection with . . .” and “likely to cause confusion,” are well established by our case law. See, e.g., id. at 322–25; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney, 263 F.3d 359, 365–67 (4th Cir. 2001). 2 In the context of trademark registration under 15 U.S.C. § 1051, “use in commerce” carries the somewhat stricter definition found in 15 U.S.C. § 1127. See, e.g., VersaTop Support Sys., LLC v. Ga. Expo, Inc., 921 F.3d 1364, 1368–70 (Fed. Cir. 2019). Since Abitron refers to an “infringing use in commerce,” the § 1114(1)(a) definition rather than the § 1127 definition applies here. 600 U.S. at 422–23; accord Hetronic Int’l, Inc. v. Hetronic Ger. GmbH, 99 F.4th 1150, 1162, 1167 (10th Cir. 2024). 11 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 12 of 30 This definition plainly encompasses not just “direct sales,” but also “marketing, advertising, and distributing activities.” Hetronic Int’l, Inc. v. Hetronic Ger. GmbH, 99 F.4th 1150, 1163, 1167 (10th Cir. 2024). When direct sales are at issue, they occur in the United States if the customers are in the United States. Id. at 1163. When marketing, advertising, and distribution are at issue, they occur in the United States if the intended recipients are in the United States. We readily conclude that dBV’s conduct meets this standard. As we noted in our prior opinion, dBV maintained a website that used dInc’s trademark as its domain name and was “virtually identical” to dInc’s website, all in an effort to sell “essentially the same” services as dInc. dmarcian, 60 F.4th at 140 (quoting dmarcian, Inc. v. dmarcian Eur. BV, No. 1:21-cv-67, 2021 WL 2144915, at *18 (W.D.N.C. May 26, 2021)). The website was accessible in the United States and featured a button for customers in “the Americas,” and dBV affirmatively sent a message to customers in the United States highlighting its software product. Id. at 129, 140. These facts are sufficient to demonstrate marketing or advertising in the United States. dBV also succeeded in luring at least one company based in the United States, Clarizen, to switch providers, which is sufficient to demonstrate a direct sale in the United States. Although our prior opinion applied Steele’s effects-focused test, the bottom line remains the same under Abitron’s conduct-focused test. If dBV had passively operated a website that was accessible in the United States, and there was no additional evidence that it had targeted or interacted with customers in the United States, the Lanham Act might well not reach it. Since most businesses around the world have websites that are accessible in the United States, a rule that hinged on web 12 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 13 of 30 access alone would turn the presumption against extraterritoriality into “a craven watchdog.” Morrison, 561 U.S. at 266. But on the facts here, which go beyond mere web access, it is likely that dBV used dInc’s trademark or its imitation “in commerce . . . in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of . . . services” in the United States. 15 U.S.C. § 1114(1)(a). We need not rehash the “likely to cause confusion” analysis, which remains the same in the wake of Abitron. 2. dInc’s trade secret claim was brought under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), which provides a private civil cause of action to owners of trade secrets that have been misappropriated. 18 U.S.C. § 1836(b)(1). Since Abitron concerned the Lanham Act rather than the DTSA, the decision’s holding does not directly affect this claim. Nevertheless, Abitron’s two-step framework reinforces that dInc is likely to succeed in its DTSA arguments. The DTSA’s private civil action provision quite explicitly “applies to conduct occurring outside the United States,” so long as the offender committed “an act in furtherance of the offense . . . in the United States.” Id. § 1837. This language provides the “unmistakable instruction” from Congress that is needed to rebut the presumption against extraterritoriality at step one of Abitron’s framework. 600 U.S. at 418; see also RJR Nabisco, 579 U.S. at 338–39 (coming to the same conclusion about a RICO provision that prohibits certain conduct “tak[ing] place outside the United States” (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1957(d)(2))). That means the DTSA’s reach is global. 13 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 14 of 30 Once the presumption has been rebutted, the only remaining question is whether the facts of the case satisfy “the limits Congress has . . . imposed on the statute’s foreign application.” Abitron, 600 U.S. at 418 (quoting RJR Nabisco, 579 U.S. at 337–38). The relevant limit in this DTSA provision is the presence of a domestic “act in furtherance of the offense.” 18 U.S.C. § 1837(2). Although the DTSA applies extraterritorially and the Lanham Act does not, the two statutes are in a certain respect alike. When a foreign company steals an American company’s trade secrets and commits some act in furtherance of its theft inside the United States, the DTSA applies. And when a foreign company steals an American company’s trademarks and commits an act of infringement inside the United States, the Lanham Act applies. Both laws require culpable domestic conduct for justification. The difference lies only in the nature of the conduct required. It would be a mistake, then, to conclude that the DTSA’s global reach facilitates careless intervention in the affairs of other nations. The DTSA, like the Lanham Act as interpreted in Abitron, protects American property interests without running roughshod over international comity interests. While “[f]oreign conduct is [generally] the domain of foreign law,” Microsoft Corp., 550 U.S. at 455 (second alteration in original), foreign conduct becomes the domain of the DTSA once the offender has chosen to operate here. Since dBV has so chosen, the DTSA may reach it. As we noted in our prior opinion, dBV “‘originally gained access’ to dInc’s trade secrets through ‘data stored on servers within the United States.’” dmarcian, 60 F.4th at 141 (quoting dmarcian, 2021 WL 2144915, at *22). An agreement between the parties permitted dBV to use dInc’s trade 14 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 15 of 30 secrets for limited purposes, but dBV went “beyond the scope of the parties’ agreement” by using those trade secrets in its own software product—a product that not only replicated dInc’s product but directly competed with it. dmarcian, 2021 WL 2144915, at *21. dBV then marketed its product in the United States by messaging American customers and featuring an “Americas” button on its website, and it successfully convinced at least one American company, Clarizen, to switch to its product. Id. at *22. These efforts involved “using [dInc’s] trade secrets to conduct business with customers in the United States.” Id. In light of these actions, there is no merit to dBV’s contention that it is beyond the reach of the DTSA. If dBV had not gained access to dInc’s trade secrets in the United States, and it had not used those trade secrets to seek out customers in the United States, this would be a different lawsuit. But if dBV had not taken those steps, it is possible that this would not be a lawsuit at all. For now, a lawsuit it is, and one in which dInc is likely to succeed on its DTSA claim. 3. The last of dInc’s claims on which the district court found a likelihood of success are North Carolina common law claims: tortious interference with contract and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage. These are not directly affected by Abitron’s holding or its two-step framework. The presumption against extraterritoriality is a federal canon of statutory construction, so it is inapplicable where there is no federal statute at issue. Wudi Indus. (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. v. Wong, 143 F.4th 250, 259 (4th Cir. 2025). 15 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 16 of 30 Nevertheless, state common law and federal statutory law share an essential feature: neither “rule[s] the world.” Microsoft Corp., 550 U.S. at 454 (referring to the latter). A state may not simply apply its common law beyond its borders where it has no relationship to a dispute. The federal Constitution, for example, prohibits a state from applying its law to cases in which it does not have “a significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts, creating state interests.” Allstate Ins. Co. v. Hague, 449 U.S. 302, 313 (1981). Suffice it to say that state common law must abide by a similar balance to the one struck by Abitron between the rights of citizens and regard for other sovereigns. As we articulated in our prior opinion, dInc’s tortious interference claims are consistent with this balance. dmarcian, 60 F.4th at 142–43. dInc, a North Carolina entity, had contracts with its existing customers and used its website to solicit new customers, with whom it hoped to execute contracts. dmarcian, 2021 WL 2144915, at *23–24. dBV sought to interfere with these existing and prospective contractual relationships by cloning dInc’s website and marketing its own services to some of the same customers. It did succeed in winning over at least one customer, Clarizen, that had previously been a customer of dInc. The harm from its conduct befell dInc. This chain of events touched North Carolina sufficiently closely to justify the application of North Carolina tort law. D. Given dInc’s continued likelihood of success on the merits of its trademark, trade secret, and tortious interference claims, the second amended preliminary injunction is a permissible restraint on dBV. 16 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 17 of 30 “The purpose of a preliminary injunction is . . . to preserve the relative positions of the parties until a trial on the merits can be held.” Univ. of Tex. v. Camenisch, 451 U.S. 390, 395 (1981). When a defendant is likely violating the rights of a plaintiff, a district court may issue a preliminary injunction that provides the plaintiff “complete relief” from the ongoing violation. Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831, 851 (2025). The court may not, however, provide more relief than that. Id. The scope of the remedy afforded by the injunction should match the scope of the violation it seeks to prevent. Since neither the scope of the ongoing violation nor the remedy that would best prevent it are always clear, especially at the preliminary stage, district courts have some leeway when crafting an injunction. It is “an exercise of discretion and judgment,” Trump v. Int’l Refugee Assistance Project, 582 U.S. 571, 579 (2017), characterized by “[f]lexibility rather than rigidity,” Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U.S. 321, 329 (1944). The match between violation and remedy must be approximate, but it need not be perfect. Since the scope of the second amended preliminary injunction approximately matches the scope of dBV’s likely violations, the injunction is permissible. The fourth and fifth decretal paragraphs are supported by dInc’s Lanham Act claims. Although the Lanham Act prohibits only domestic trademark infringement, the decretal paragraphs respect this limitation by enjoining use of dInc’s name and trademarks only on websites “accessible to IP addresses from the United States.” J.A. 2070–71. The injunction need not be so tailored that it prohibits the precise manner in which dBV likely violated the Lanham Act—by, for example, featuring a button for American customers and executing a direct sale in the United States. “The more specific the order, the more 17 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 18 of 30 opportunities for evasion,” and an injunction that can be evaded is not one that provides complete relief. Minn. Mining & Mfg. Co. v. Pribyl, 259 F.3d 587, 598 (7th Cir. 2001) (quoting Scandia Down Corp. v. Euroquilt, Inc., 772 F.2d 1423, 1431 (7th Cir. 1985)). The other decretal paragraphs of the injunction are supported by dInc’s DTSA and tortious interference claims. The first and second paragraphs apply to North and South America, Oceania, and part of Asia, and the third, sixth, and seventh paragraphs apply worldwide. Given the express extraterritorial scope of the DTSA and the long arm of North Carolina tort law, we see no errors in the territorial reach of these paragraphs. E. Finally, dBV challenges the injunction’s third decretal paragraph on additional grounds. dBV says the paragraph violates Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(d)(1), which requires that an order granting an injunction “state its terms specifically” and “describe in reasonable detail—and not by referring to the complaint or other document—the act or acts restrained or required.” The rule is “no mere technical requirement[]” that can be lightly brushed off. Schmidt v. Lessard, 414 U.S. 473, 476 (1974) (per curiam). It embodies the serious substantive goals of “prevent[ing] uncertainty and confusion on the part of those faced with injunctive orders” and enabling “intelligent appellate review.” Id. at 476–77. At the same time, the rule does not require that every injunction read like an instruction manual. There are good reasons why a district court might choose to craft an injunction in general terms, including that, as the preceding discussion noted, a more specific order can be more easily evaded. In a trade secrets case, the district court may also 18 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 19 of 30 wish to avoid inadvertently disclosing the plaintiff’s trade secrets by describing them with too much particularity. Minn. Mining & Mfg. Co., 259 F.3d at 597–98. For these reasons, our cases have taken a practical approach to the Rule 65(d)(1) inquiry. We consider “the language of an injunction . . . in the light of the circumstances surrounding its entry.” United States v. Fuller, 919 F.2d 139 (Tbl.), 1990 WL 190495, at *3 (4th Cir. Dec. 4, 1990) (per curiam). When evaluating whether an injunction provides a defendant fair notice about what is proscribed, we will not “strip[] it of its context.” Kadel v. Folwell, 100 F.4th 122, 160 (4th Cir. 2024) (en banc), vacated on other grounds by Folwell v. Kadel, 145 S. Ct. 2838 (Mem.) (2025). The third decretal paragraph prohibits dBV from “making changes to the trade secret source code.” J.A. 2070. In context, this is sufficiently clear to pass Rule 65(d)(1) muster. The district court found in 2021 that dBV likely misappropriated the trade secrets dInc had in its source code, and we affirmed that finding on appeal in 2023. dmarcian, 60 F.4th at 141–42. The district court repeated the finding when it issued the second amended preliminary injunction in 2024. The “trade secret source code” referenced in the injunction is the same trade secret source code that has been the subject of the likelihood of success finding all along. See Ciena Corp. v. Jarrard, 203 F.3d 312, 321–22 (4th Cir. 2000) (affirming a similar injunction). If dBV’s real objection is to the trade secret definition underlying the likelihood of success finding, the time to bring it has long passed. * * * In affirming the injunction, we remain cognizant of the fact that this case and the litigation in the Netherlands have a degree of overlap. We wish to express our sincere 19 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1790 Doc: 77 Filed: 07/10/2026 Pg: 20 of 30 appreciation for the conscientious manner in which our colleagues in the Dutch judiciary have approached their end of the case. We have no desire to indiscriminately sweep activities in the Netherlands into the net of American law. As the facts of this case reveal, however, intellectual property disputes often involve interrelationships that cannot be confined to a single sovereign. If we were to vacate the preliminary injunction, we would be authorizing a foreign company to steal the intellectual property of an American company, use the stolen property to target American customers, and then claim its foreign status as a shield against American law. This American company and others in its shoes would be left defenseless. Respect for other sovereigns does not require us to countenance such behavior. III. Having addressed dBV’s appeal of the second amended preliminary injunction, we turn to dBV’s appeals of the correction order and the contempt order. We dismiss both for lack of appellate jurisdiction. A. Recall that the district court issued the correction order in response to proceedings in the Netherlands. dBV, in the course of opposing a stay, told the Dutch court t