Finders Keepers — Search Engines Benefit From Broad Interpretation Of User Rights

Copyright 2008, Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP

Originally published in Blakes Bulletin on Information Technology, May 2008

With such great resources of knowledge available through networked computers, powerful search engines have come to be an essential part of our daily lives.

Search engines are the gateways to a wide variety of content — written, graphical, photographic, artistic, video, and musical. Search engines may retrieve data out of its intended context, or provide links to illegal copies or to Web sites that are misleading, fraudulent or infected by malware. And so it is not surprising that litigants are increasingly testing the limits of search engines' freedom to index and display proprietary content. A recent United States appellate decision shows the great significance such cases can have for the development of intellectual property law, and perhaps points the way to a similar result