This week, in Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions, Inc., Canada's Supreme Court upheld (in a 7-2 decision) the grant of a preliminary injunction against Google to remove a link to a website that allegedly infringed the intellectual property of a small tech company.  The IP controversy was not against Google as a party, but the lower court ordered Google to remove the link to the defendant's website from access worldwide.  Google had delisted the website from searches in Canada (at google.ca).  But the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the grant of a worldwide preliminary injunction that affects people around the world.  [Download the decision.]

The Supreme Court reasoned: 

•  Google’s argument that a global injunction violates international comity because it is possible that the order could not have been obtained in a foreign jurisdiction, or that to comply with it would result in Google violating the laws of that jurisdiction, is theoretical. If Google has evidence that complying with such an injunction would require it to violate the laws of another jurisdiction, including interfering with freedom of expression, it is always free to apply to the British Columbia courts to vary the interlocutory order accordingly. To date, Google has made no such application. In the absence of an evidentiary foundation, and given Google’s right to seek a rectifying order, it is not equitable to deny E the extraterritorial scope it needs to make the remedy effective, or even to put the onus on it to demonstrate, country by country, where such an order is legally permissible.
• D and its representatives have ignored all previous court orders made against them, have left British Columbia, and continue to operate their business from unknown locations outside Canada. E has made efforts to locate D with limited success. D is only able to survive — at the expense of E’s survival — on Google’s search engine which directs potential customers to D’s websites. This makes Google the determinative player in allowing the harm to occur. On balance, since the world‑wide injunction is the only effective way to mitigate the harm to E pending the trial, the only way, in fact, to preserve E itself pending the resolution of the underlying litigation, and since any countervailing harm to Google is minimal to non‑existent, the interlocutory injunction should be upheld.

Commentators, such as Michael Geist, pointed out the danger in the Canadian approach: if each country (isuch as China or Iran) used the same power to issue worldwide injunctions against Google, there would be a race to the bottom and massive censorship online.