Google has on 24th of July brought an action before the US District Court (Northern District of California-San Jose Division) to prevent enforcement of the Canadian Supreme Court Order that prohibits Google from publishing within the US, search result information about the contents of the internet.
The Canadian Supreme Court in the case of Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc., had upheld the Order issued to Google to execute a worldwide injunction to globally de-index the defendant’s websites (Datalink), which the defendant, in breach of several court orders, was using to unlawfully sell the intellectual property of the plaintiff company (Equustek). The Canadian Court had dismissed, as theoretical, Google’s concerns about the injunction violating U.S. law.
According to the petitioner, removing a website link from the search index neither prevents public access to the website, nor removes the website from the internet at large. It was also contended that the petitioner is not a publisher and the fact that Google’s search results may contain snippets from third-party websites, does not transform those snippets into content created by petitioner-Google. Violation of Communications Decency Act, providing legal immunity to providers of interactive computer services in respect of content created by others, and other US provisions is alleged in the dispute.