On June 28, 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a British Columbia court decision that ordered Google to remove website search results from its global search index. The case began when Equustek accused Datalink Technology Gateways (“Datalink”) of allegedly infringing Equustek’s trademarks and trade secrets to create similar competing products. Equustek obtained a number of court orders prohibiting Datalink from carrying on business. Datalink contravened the court orders and then fled the province, but continued business outside of Canada. Equustek, unable to enforce the court orders, requested that Google assist by blocking the websites that included the infringing intellectual property. Google agreed to do so, but only with respect to the Canadian version of the search engine. As a result, if an individual was searching on google.com, websites with Datalink’s products would still appear in the search results, but not if they were searching from google.ca. As such, Equustek requested that the court order Google to de-index the websites globally as opposed to only on the google.ca search engine.
At the Supreme Court of B.C. Equustek was awarded a broader interlocutory injunction restraining Google from including the infringing websites in search results worldwide. The B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the decision.
At the Supreme Court of Canada, the lower courts’ decisions were upheld along with the worldwide injunction restraining Google from displaying search results which included Datalink’s websites.
In its decision, the Supreme Court of Canada stated “the problem, in this case, is occurring online and globally. The internet has no borders; its natural habitat is global. The only way to ensure the interlocutory injunction [order] attained its objective was to have it apply where Google operates – globally”.
This decision provides charities and not-for-profits that own intellectual property with new tools to enforce their rights when infringers are transcending borders. Canadian intellectual property owners may now prevent a defendant located outside of Canada from offering infringing products and services online by applying for an order from the court requesting that search engines such as Google stop indexing the infringer’s websites in search results. This is a welcome decision for the charity and not-for-profit sector as it provides intellectual property owners who rely on the internet as their primary market with effective strategies for enforcing their rights.