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OTTAWA — A potentially groundbreaking Supreme Court ruling recognizes that Canadian courts have jurisdiction to make sweeping orders to block access to Internet content beyond Canada’s borders.

In a David and Goliath legal saga, the high court sided Wednesday with a small British Columbia company in upholding a ruling that ordered popular search engine Google to wipe out references to a former distributor accused of stealing trade secrets.

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In writing for the majority of the court in the 7-2 decision, Justice Rosalie Abella said the only way to ensure the injunction met its objective was to have the order apply where Google operates — all over the world.

“The problem in this case is occurring online and globally,” she wrote. “The Internet has no borders — its natural habitat is global.”

Google was challenging a 2015 ruling by a British Columbia court that ordered it to stop indexing or referencing websites associated with a company called Datalink Technologies Gateways.