SCC Upholds Worldwide Ban On Certain Search Results

On June 28, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) released its decision in Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc.¹ This is an appeal brought by Google from a decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which granted an interlocutory injunction ordering Google to globally remove certain websites from its search engine. Equustek had alleged in the underlying action that these websites were selling goods that infringed its intellectual property.

Background

Equustek, the plaintiff in the underlying action, is a British Columbia company that makes networking equipment for industrial machinery.² Datalink, the defendant in the underlying action, acted as Equustek's distributor until it allegedly began to re-label one of Equustek's products as its own and ultimately used Equustek's trade secrets to design and manufacture a competing product. Datalink sold its competing product online and customers were able to find Datalink's website by searching on Google.³