(British Columbia) (Civil)
(By Leave)
Keywords
Administrative
law - Interlocutory orders, Injunctions, Private international law,
Extraterritoriality, Communications law, Internet, Intellectual property,
Industrial design.
Summary
Case
summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of
Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges
of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information
purposes only.
Administrative
law — Interlocutory orders — Injunctions — Private international law —
Extraterritoriality — Communications law — Internet — Intellectual property —
Industrial design —
Interim injunction issued against non-party to litigation — Google prohibited
from displaying impugned websites in Internet search results — Under what
circumstances may a court order a search engine to block search results, having
regard to the interest in access to information and freedom of expression, and
what limits (either geographic or temporal) must be imposed on those orders? —
Do Canadian courts have the authority to block search results outside of
Canada’s borders? — Under what circumstances, if any, is a litigant entitled to
an interlocutory injunction against a non-party that is not alleged to have
done anything wrong?
The
plaintiffs sued their former distributors for unlawful appropriation of trade
secrets, alleging that the distributors designed and sold counterfeit versions
of their products. The plaintiffs obtained injunctions against the distributors,
prohibiting them from carrying on any business online. When this proved
ineffective, the plaintiffs sought a court order against Google, to prohibit it
from displaying search results that included the distributors’ websites.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia granted
a worldwide injunction against Google, finding that it had territorial
competence over Google and that it possessed an inherent jurisdiction to
maintain the rule of law and protect its processes, which in appropriate
circumstances may include an injunction against non-parties. In this case, the
balance of convenience favoured granting an injunction. The Court of Appeal
agreed that the court held jurisdiction over Google with respect to the
injunction application. It also concluded that it was permissible to seek
interim relief against a non-party. The power to grant injunctions is
presumptively unlimited, and injunctions aimed at maintaining order need not be
directed solely at the parties involved in litigation. In this case, an
injunction with worldwide effect was justified.
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