BC Court of Appeal Upholds Worldwide Injunction on Google

On June 13, 2015, the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA) released its decision in Equustek v Google, 2015 BCCA 265, dismissing the appeal of Google Inc. (Google) from an interim injunction issued by the lower court prohibiting Google from indexing a list of websites relating to the business of the defendants in the underlying action (the action) on Google’s global search engine, google.com (the lower court decision was previously reported in E-TIPS® Newsletter, here). Google is a non-party to the action, in which the plaintiffs’ allege that the defendants designed a product using the plaintiffs’ trade secrets, then passed off (and continue passing off) that product as the plaintiffs’ product online.

Google had previously agreed with the plaintiffs in the action to remove 345 URLs from search results on google.ca but resisted the removal of URLs from the more broadly accessed google.com. Subsequently, the plaintiffs sought and won the injunction under appeal in Equustek v Google relating to google.com. By dismissing Google’s appeal, the BCCA has effectively opened the doors for BC litigants to seek modified search results from international information aggregators like Google for infringement of domestic IP rights (and perhaps other rights), if the proper legal tests are met.

Summary by: Jennifer R. Davidson and John Lucas