Google must obey worldwide injunction: Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of OTTAWA Canada has upheld a B.C. court ruling that ordered popular search engine Google to wipe out references to a discredited company.
The high court’s 7-2 decision on Tuesday recognizes that Canadian courts have jurisdiction to make sweeping orders to block access to content on the Internet beyond Canada’s borders.
Justice Rosalie Abella said the only way to ensure that the injunction met its objective was to have the order apply where Google operates — all over the world.
“The Internet has no borders — its natural habitat is global.”
Google was challenging a 2015 ruling by a the B.C. Supreme Court that ordered it to stop indexing or referencing websites associated with a company called Datalink Technologies Gateways.
The B.C. Supreme Court granted the injunction at the request of Equustek Solutions Inc., which was locked in battle with Datalink for allegedly stealing, copying and reselling industrial network interface hardware it created.
Burnaby-based Equustek wanted to stop Datalink from selling the hardware through various websites and turned to Google for help.
Initially, Google removed more than 300 web pages from search results on Google.ca, but more kept popping up, so Equustek sought — and won — the broader injunction that ordered Google to impose a worldwide ban.
Google fought the “worldwide order,” arguing that Canadian courts don’t have legal authority to impose such an injunction.
It called the injunction “an improper and unprecedented extension of Canadian jurisprudence.”
Google’s lawyers had argued that if the court upheld a broad international injunction, it might inspire less democratic governments to seek binding court orders in Canada that are more intrusive.