## Facts

- Equustek Solutions Inc., a British Columbia technology company, alleged that Datalink used Equustek’s confidential information and intellectual property to market competing networking products online.
- British Columbia courts issued multiple orders requiring Datalink to stop the alleged misconduct and return confidential information.
- Datalink disobeyed the orders, left the jurisdiction, and continued selling the impugned products online from unknown locations, largely outside Canada.
- Google, not a party to the underlying dispute, indexed Datalink’s websites; Google voluntarily removed specific URLs from google.ca on a URL-by-URL basis.
- Datalink shifted to other websites, and the content remained accessible through Google’s non-Canadian domains.
- Equustek sought an interlocutory injunction compelling Google to de-index all of Datalink’s websites from search results worldwide pending trial.
- The British Columbia Supreme Court granted the injunction, the British Columbia Court of Appeal affirmed, and Google appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether a British Columbia court may issue an injunction binding Google, a non-party search engine operator, to make its orders effective.
2. Whether ordering worldwide de-indexing pending trial is a just and equitable exercise of discretion, given extraterritorial reach, comity, and expression concerns.
3. Whether the requirements for interlocutory relief were satisfied (serious issue, irreparable harm, and balance of convenience).

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed Google’s appeal and upheld the worldwide interlocutory de-indexing injunction.
- The Court held the British Columbia courts had in personam jurisdiction over Google because it carried on business in the province.
- The Court concluded an injunction against a non-party may issue where necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the court’s orders and where the non-party facilitates the alleged harm.
- Applying the interlocutory injunction test, the Court found a serious issue to be tried, ongoing irreparable harm to Equustek, and a balance of convenience favoring relief.
- The Court determined that limiting relief to google.ca would be ineffective; worldwide de-indexing was required to prevent the order from being frustrated.
- The Court treated potential conflicts with foreign law as speculative on the record; Google could later seek to vary the order if a concrete legal conflict arose.
- The majority rejected that the order improperly targeted protected expression, characterizing the subject matter as facilitating sales alleged to violate court orders.
- The dissent would have set the order aside as overly broad, insufficiently attentive to comity, and of uncertain effectiveness.

## Legal Principles

- Courts with personal jurisdiction over an Internet intermediary may grant injunctive relief against the intermediary, even if it is not a party, where necessary to prevent court orders from being rendered ineffective.
- Interlocutory injunctions are assessed by whether there is a serious issue to be tried, irreparable harm absent relief, and a balance of convenience favoring the applicant.
- In Internet contexts, effective relief may require measures operating beyond local territorial limits when geographically limited orders would not prevent the harm.
- Comity and potential conflicts with foreign law are relevant to equitable discretion; a court may grant relief where no actual conflict is shown and may later vary the order if a conflict materializes.
- Courts may consider the practical burden on the intermediary and whether the relief aligns with the objective of preventing ongoing unlawful conduct pending trial.

## Conclusion

The Court affirmed that a provincial superior court may order a global search de-indexing injunction against a non-party intermediary when personal jurisdiction exists and worldwide relief is necessary to prevent irreparable harm and to preserve the effectiveness of the court’s process pending trial.


Google Inc. v. Equustek Sols. Inc., 2017 SCC 34 (Can.)