In an unprecedented Canadian legal decision, the BC Court of
Appeal upheld an injunction requiring Google, who was not a party
to the BC lawsuit, to remove from its worldwide search engine
an expansive list of websites, including entire domains, operated
by the defendant to the lawsuit.
This decision opens the door for litigants in BC to enjoin third
parties who are subject to the jurisdiction of BC, such as Google,
from displaying online content which infringes a plaintiff's
intellectual property or other rights worldwide.
Facts
The defendants, former distributors of the plaintiffs'
product, allegedly acquired confidential information and trade
secrets of the plaintiff, promoted and distributed
the plaintiffs' products as their own, and later sold
their own competing products created from those trade secrets,
using the plaintiffs' trade-marks. The plaintiffs
obtained orders prohibiting this infringing conduct.
