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Business News Digital
Canadian IP case forces Google to remove infringing links in multiple countries
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 15 June 2015
Another organisation often called upon to be more pro-active in the fight against piracy is Google because, while the web giant will remove specific links to infringing content from its search engine when provided with takedown notices from copyright owners, it has generally resisted calls to block entire piracy websites from its search results. Or to be more pro-active itself in ensuring infringing content does not appear in its search engine in the first place.
Though the web firm has failed to overturn an interesting intellectual property ruling in the Canadian courts, which is interesting because the impact of the court decision applies beyond Canada. Google had argued that courts in the Canadian province of British Columbia couldn’t pass an injunction affecting its operations beyond their jurisdiction.
This wasn’t a straight piracy case like the one commonly pursued by the music industry, but an IP dispute between two competing Canadian companies, with one accusing the other of having stolen its intellectual property to sell competing products. The defendants were former employees of the plaintiff, Equustek Solutions Inc.
Google became involved in the case because Equustek said it was directing people to a website selling the IP infringing goods. The web firm voluntarily de-listed the offending links from its Canadian search engine, but Equustek wanted a wider removal of their competitor’s products from the Google platform, most notably the US version of the search engine that plenty of people in Canada go to by default.
And last year Equustek successfully secured an injunction in the British Columbia courts forcing Google to block the offending links beyond Canada. The web firm predictably appealed, questioning both the court’s jurisdiction over Google at all (it has no offices in the province) and, more importantly, the court’s power to issue a multi-territory injunction.
On the former the court pointed out Google definitely traded in British Columbia while, on the latter more important point, the court said, according to Torrentfreak: “British Columbia courts are called upon to adjudicate disputes involving foreign residents on a daily basis, and the fact that their decisions may affect the activities of those people outside the borders of British Columbia is not determinative of whether an order may be granted”.
While conceding that the court must be cautious when passing injunctions that affect companies and consumers beyond its jurisdiction, it said: “In the case before us, there is no realistic assertion that the judge’s order will offend the sensibilities of any other nation. It has not been suggested that the order prohibiting the defendants from advertising wares that violate the intellectual property rights of the plaintiffs offends the core values of any nation”.
Of course, the specifics of the Equustek case mean this is not a direct parallel to the music industry’s many and various lawsuits aiming to block consumer access to piracy operations. But as rights owners consider pursuing legal action to try and force Google to remove entire piracy websites – rather than just individual links – from its search results, that an IP ruling in one country is impacting on the web firm’s search engine in another is interesting.
