Google asks US court to block Canadian global delisting order

The lawsuit filed by the US technology giant asks for a declaratory judgment that the Canadian court’s order cannot be enforced in the United States.

The case, which tests the limits of global copyright protections in the digital era, stems from a legal dispute involving Canadian telecommunications equipment manufacturer Equustek Solutions, which successfully sued another company for relabeling its products and passing them off as their own.

Google agreed to de-index 345 webpages associated with Datalink, the offending firm in Canada. But the company fled the country and continued to market the counterfeit products from an unknown location.

Equustek then succeeded in obtaining a court order, upheld last month by Canada’s Supreme Court, that would require Google to delete all mentions of Datalink worldwide.

In its 143-page filing, Google said the Canadian court order would be “unprecedented” and violate its rights to operate in the United States.

“Without a declaration from a United States court that enforcement of the Canadian order in the US is unlawful, Google believes that Equustek will continue to pursue enforcement… and seek to hold Google in contempt,” the document said.

The case is the latest dispute over jurisdiction following a case in Europe where French authorities ordered Google to delete search results worldwide in compliance with Europe’s “right to be forgotten” directive.

In the latest filing, Google said it was an “innocent non-party” in the case and simply a tool to find information.

“Google is not the internet,” the filing said. “The vast majority of internet websites are hosted by and operated through service providers other than Google.”

Additionally, it said Equustek had not asked for delisting injunctions against other search engines, such as Bing or Yahoo, or against social media platforms or other third parties.