Constitutional limits

The Supreme Court of the United States has held that constitutional requirements of due process limit the exercise of personal jurisdiction over nonresidents. The same outer constitutional boundaries for personal jurisdiction apply in both state courts and federal courts. Moreover, because of Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP 4), a federal court ordinarily applies the personal jurisdiction statutes (e.g., long-arm statutes) of the state in which it sits, even when the state has not extended personal jurisdiction to its constitutional limits. (Some states, such as California, have long-arm statutes that give their courts personal jurisdiction to the extent constitutionally permitted.) In some exceptional circumstances, FRCP 4 grants a federal court personal jurisdiction when the law of the state in which it sits would not.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_%28United_States%29