Canadian appeals court rules against Google, says business presence gives country jurisdiction to order a worldwide injunction to block sites in search results
Andy / TorrentFreak :
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2015 ruling is the origin point of a jurisdictional fight that has run for years since: a Canadian appeals court holds that Google's business presence in the country lets a Canadian judge order search results delisted worldwide. The reasoning was later cemented when Canada's top court ruled Google can be compelled by lower courts to remove results globally, prompting alarm from civil liberties groups Canada's top court upheld worldwide removal orders.
Google's answer has been to litigate on its home turf — it filed suit in a US district court arguing that altering search results globally violates the First Amendment Google filed a US injunction against the Canadian order, and won a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement a US court blocked enforcement of the Canadian order. A 2023 Canadian appeals decision then widened the front again, holding Google's search engine is covered by federal privacy law with possible right-to-be-forgotten implications the same court later brought search under federal privacy law.
First-order effects
- Google must comply with the Canadian order by blocking the targeted sites from search results everywhere, not just in Canada — one national court effectively sets global search policy.
- The plaintiff gains a remedy no single country's takedown regime normally offers: worldwide delisting enforced through a court where Google merely does business.
Second-order effects
- Google's countermove is jurisdictional arbitrage: suing in US district court on First Amendment grounds, which sets up a direct conflict between a Canadian removal order and an American order blocking it.
- Other rights holders and regulators gain a template — argue business presence, obtain a global injunction — pushing every large search intermediary toward defending against the most aggressive available forum.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward a standing collision-of-laws problem for global intermediaries: if national courts can each claim worldwide reach, compliance with one order means violating another, and platforms become the battleground for whose law governs the internet.
- The same court's later move into privacy law suggests the worldwide-injunction doctrine is expanding beyond copyright-style disputes into right-to-be-forgotten claims, broadening who can invoke it.
The trend: National courts are increasingly asserting extraterritorial authority over global platforms' search results, forcing companies like Google to choose which country's order to obey.