GOOGLE INC. v. EQUUSTEK & THE SUPREME COURT OF CANADA

In the case of Google Inc. v. Equustek, the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the grant of a preliminary injunction by the Court of Appeals of British Columbia ordering Google to de-index on a global basis websites of a party accused of passing off the plaintiff’s goods and misusing its trade secrets.  Equustek, a small Canadian technology company, had brought suit in British Columbia against its former distributor (Datalink) for passing off and misuse of their trade secrets. Datalink initially contested the action but left British Columbia for an unknown destination and continued to maintain web pages that were indexed by Google. The British Columbia courts issued an injunction against Datalink ordering it to cease operating or carrying on business through any website. Following this and a request by Equustek, Google had de-indexed some but not all of Datalink’s webpages so that they would not be found if they were being searched for on Google’s Canadian site, google.ca, but they could still be found by a search for example on google.com or other country-specific Google search sites. When these measures had proved ineffective to stop Datalink’s activities, Datalink sought the injunction now affirmed.

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