Google is taking legal action in the US to stop Canada's Supreme Court from controlling its search results worldwide.

Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Google to remove links to webpages owned by a company called Datalink Technologies on all of its search websites, worldwide. Canadian courts had previously found that Datalink was illegally re-labeling products and infringing the intellectual property of a Vancouver tech firm called Equustek.

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Yesterday, Google filed a lawsuit (PDF) in California, asking a judge to rule that the Canadian order is unenforceable in the US. Google lawyers argue that the order violates both the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which prevents online platforms from being held responsible for most user behavior.

"Google now turns to this Court, asking it to declare that the rights established by the First Amendment and the Communications Decency Act are not merely theoretical," write Google lawyers in their complaint. "The Canadian order is repugnant to those rights, and the order violates principles of international comity, particularly since the Canadian plaintiffs never established any violation of their rights under U.S. law."

The sweeping and unprecedented order from Canada's highest court has been years in the making. The battle began when Equustek, a Vancouver-based maker of networking devices, sued Datalink, a former distributor, saying that Datalink had illegally used its trade secrets and re-labeled its products. Datalink initially denied the allegations, then left the province and apparently continued selling from an undisclosed location abroad.

Equustek demanded that Google alter its search results to stop Datalink's sales, and a Canadian court agreed that was a good solution. By early 2013, Google had de-indexed some 345 Datalink webpages from its Canadian website, google.ca.


But a court in British Columbia issued a broader order, insisting that Google stop listing Datalink's entire website anywhere in the world. Last month, Canada's Supreme Court upheld that order, which some have called the "first global de-indexing order."

“No compelling interest”

"Google is not the Internet," the company's lawyers stated. It has no power to remove Datalink webpages from the net, which would require action by Datalink's registrars and hosts, if not the owners themselves. Datalink can still be called up or linked to. Not to mention, Equustek never bothered with Yahoo and Bing, so those search engines still show Datalink pages.

Despite that, Canada's Supreme Court said that Google was the "determinative player in allowing the harm to occur." Google removed the links as requested in Canada, but Datalink websites are "still live and in business, and can still be found through other search engines and Internet sources."


Google says that Equustek is going to try to get the Canadian order enforced and hold Google in contempt. That shouldn't be allowed to happen, at least in the US, argues Google, since doing so would be a clear First Amendment violation. "The Canadian Order furthers no compelling interest (nor a substantial interest), and is not narrowly tailored to achieve one," write Google lawyers.

"The Canadian Order is further repugnant to United States public policy because it issued an injunction against Google, an innocent non-party, merely for the sake of 'convenience,'" states Google.

Equustek didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about Google's new filing.


"We're taking this court action to defend the legal principle that one country shouldn't be able to decide what information people in other countries can access online," Google lawyer David Price told Ars in an e-mailed statement. "Undermining this core principle inevitably leads to a world where Internet users are subject to the most restrictive content limitations from every country."

Free-speech advocates have come down on Google's side in the case. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Human Rights Watch all were listed as intervenors supporting Google's case at Canada's Supreme Court.

The Canadian music industry, on the other hand, praised the order against Google.


"They have an affirmative duty to take steps to prevent the Internet from becoming a black market," the president of Music Canada told the CBC when last month's order came down.