The Canadian Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Google to remove a Web site from its worldwide search results, in what some experts are calling a landmark international copyright protection case.
The original injunction, which the court upheld, was requested by Canadian telecom equipment manufacturer Equustek Solutions, which successfully sued another company for relabeling its products and passing them off as their own.
Following that lower court’s ruling, Google de-indexed 345 Web pages associated with the offending firm in Canada.
However, the company fled the country and continued to market the counterfeit products from an unknown location.
Google balked when Equustek asked it to de-index all mentions of the offending company worldwide.
The US-based tech giant argued in court that it was not a party to the dispute, that such a measure was overreach and “that there are freedom of expression concerns that should have tipped the balance against granting the order.”
However, the Supreme Court said: “Without the injective relief, it was clear that Google would continue to facilitate that ongoing harm” to Equustek.
“The Internet has no borders — its natural habitat is global,” the seven-to-two ruling said. “The only way to ensure that the interlocutory injunction attained its objective was to have it apply where Google operates — globally.”
Some media groups, publishers, copyright organizations and civil liberties groups have said they are worried about the precedent it sets.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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