MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER Before the Court is Plaintiff’s letter-motion dated February 23, 2023 (ECF No. 31), requesting permission to serve Defendants via email and online publication. For the reasons set forth below, Plaintiff’s application is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART WITHOUT PREJUDICE. BACKGROUND On January 24, 2023, Plaintiff filed an ex parte application for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, seeking to enjoin Defendants from the manufacture and sale of certain alleged infringing products. See ECF No. 7. In conjunction with that application, Plaintiff requested to serve 117 Defendants listed in Schedule A of the Complaint by email and online publication. In support, Plaintiff contended that, while it has “good cause” to believe that Defendants are mainly located in China, Defendants’ precise physical addresses were “not known.” According to Plaintiff, that renders the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents (the “Hague Convention”), to which China is a signatory, inapplicable. On January 31, 2023, the Court issued an Order to Show Cause for a Preliminary Injunction and Temporary Restraining Order (ECF No. 23), in which it, inter alia, denied Plaintiff’s request for alternative service as impermissible under the Hague Convention. However, the Court stated that it would reconsider the propriety of service by email and online publication if Plaintiff showed that the Hague Convention does not apply because Plaintiff could not identify physical addresses for service for each Defendant and had demonstrated “reasonable diligence” in attempting to do so. On February 23, 2023, Plaintiff filed the instant letter-motion, renewing its request to serve the Defendants by email and online publication. The letter-motion describes Plaintiff’s efforts to locate Defendants’ physical addresses, which efforts Plaintiff argues constitute “reasonable diligence” sufficient to authorize service by electronic means. On review of Plaintiff’s papers,1 the Court now finds that Plaintiff has made a showing of “reasonable diligence” with respect to forty-five of the eighty Defendants2 listed in Schedule A. Accordingly, those forty-five Defendants may be served via electronic means of service. As for the other thirty-five Defendants, the Court finds that Plaintiff has not demonstrated “reasonable diligence,” and thus service by email or online publication is impermissible at this time. LEGAL STANDARD To determine the appropriate method of service of process, the Court looks to the rules governing service under Rule 4, and specifically to Rule 4(f) for service on foreign defendants. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(f) (providing for service on foreign defendants “by any internationally agreed means of service that is reasonably calculated to give notice”). Where, as here, the defendants in the action are believed to be located in China — a signatory to the Hague Convention — Rule 4(f) requires that the defendants be served pursuant to the Hague Convention, which has been interpreted to prohibit service by email and online publication on litigants located in China. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(f); see, e.g., ECF No. 31 at 5 (“service via email and online publication [on defendants located in China] is ‘prohibited by international agreement [and] is impermissible under Rule 4(f)(3)’” (quoting Smart Study Co. v. Acuteye-Us, No. 1:21-CV-5860-GHW, 2022 WL 2872297, at *7 (S.D.N.Y. July 21, 2022))). However, the Hague Convention does not apply — and, consequently, service by email and online publication is not prohibited on defendants located in China — where “the address of the person to be served with the document is not known to the party serving process.” Cengage Learning, Inc. v. Xuhong Wang, No. 17 Civ. 4914 (JFK), 2017 WL 11570668, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 14, 2017). A person’s address is not known if “the plaintiff exercised reasonable diligence in attempting to discover a physical address for service of process and was unsuccessful in doing so.” Advanced Access Content Sys. Licensing Adm’r, LLC v. Shen, No. 14-CV-1112 (VSB), 2018 WL 4757939, at *4 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 30, 2018). “[P]laintiffs have been found to have exercised reasonable diligence to discover a physical address…where the plaintiff researched defendant’s websites associated with defendant’s domain names, completed multiple Internet-based searche[s], called known phone numbers, and conducted in-person visits[;] where the plaintiff performed extensive investigation and issued subpoenas to the relevant domain registrars and email providers[;] and where a plaintiff has attempted to obtain the defendant’s address in a variety of ways.” Smart Study, 2022 WL 2872297, at *5 (cleaned up) (first alterations added). DISCUSSION For the reasons detailed below, the Court authorizes electronic service at this time for some, but not all, of the eighty remaining Defendants in this action. As an initial matter, Plaintiff represents that, based on the discovery it obtained from Amazon and eBay in this matter, one of the eighty Defendants is domiciled in Kyrgyzstan, and another one of the Defendants is domiciled in Thailand. See ECF No. 31-1 12. Neither Kyrgyzstan nor Thailand is a signatory to the Hague Convention. See Status Table: Hague Convention, https://www.hcch.net/en/instruments/conventions/status-table/?cid=17 (listing contracting states to the Hague Convention). Thus, service by electronic means is permitted for the two Defendants respectively located in Kyrgyzstan and Thailand. See, e.g., Chanel, Inc. v. Individuals, P’ships & Unincorporated Ass’ns Identified on Schedule “A”, No. 20-60519-CIV, 2020 WL 3272325, at *1 & n.1 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 9, 2020) (concluding that “service by e-mail and web publication w[e]re not prohibited” on a defendant based in Kyrgyzstan, because “Kyrgyzstan [is] not [a] signator[y] to the Hague Convention”); see also, e.g., adidas AG v. Individuals, Partnerships & Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule “A”, No. 19-CV-61264-UU, 2019 WL 7841807, at *2 n.3 (S.D. Fla. May 23, 2019) (“Thailand…[is] not [a] signator[y] to the Hague Convention…. Thus, there is no international agreement prohibiting service by e-mail or posting on a designated website.”). Furthermore, Plaintiff represents that for the eleven Defendants operating on Chinese e-commerce platform DHgate, DHgate has altogether failed to provide those Defendants’ physical addresses as part of its production, ECF No. 31 at 2, despite the express terms of the Court’s Order to Show Cause requiring it to produce that information, see ECF No. 23 at 9 (requiring that DHgate and certain other platforms provide expedited discovery to Plaintiff, including, inter alia, “[i]dentifying information for Defendants [operating on those platforms], including all available contact information”). Given that there is no other means to obtain the physical addresses of those eleven Defendants, they are deemed “not known.” Accordingly, Plaintiff has satisfied the “reasonable diligence” standard, and electronic service of process on those Defendants is permitted. See, e.g., Kaws Inc. v. Individuals, Corps., Ltd. Liab. Cos., P’ships, & Unincorporated Ass’ns Identified on Schedule A to Compl., No. 22-CV-9073 (JPO), 2022 WL 17404520, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 2, 2022) (where certain online platforms “did not provide physical addresses for sixty-nine defendants as part of their production” in contravention of the court’s order, and “there [wa]s no other means to obtain the physical addresses” for those defendants, “alternative service by email or online publication [w]as appropriate”). As for the remaining sixty-seven Defendants, Plaintiff represents that it “could not confirm that those Defendants could be reached at the addresses that they had provided to the Marketplace Platforms,” “including because the addresses were inaccurate or because postal delivery did not reach the Defendants.” ECF No. 31 at 2; see ECF No. 31-2 (“Hong Hu Declaration”)
8-14. Plaintiff attests that it reached that determination by conducting online investigations of the addresses provided, engaging third-party individuals to conduct visits to those addresses, attempting postal deliveries, and calling phone numbers insofar as they were available. Hong Hu Decl.
