Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack

Equustek Solutions Inc. (Equustek) (plaintiff) manufactured networking devices in Canada. Datalink Technologies (Datalink) (defendant) began infringing on Equustek’s intellectual-property rights and selling the infringing products. Equustek sued Datalink and obtained court orders prohibiting Datalink from infringing on Equustek’s intellectual property. Datalink ignored the court orders, moved overseas, and continued to infringe on Equustek’s intellectual property from an unknown location outside Canada. Following a request from Equustek, Google Inc. agreed to block Datalink from appearing in the results of Google’s Canadian search engine, google.ca. However, Google would not agree to block Datalink from appearing in the results of searches done through Google’s other URLs (e.g., google.com or google.co.uk). Thus, customers in Canada and elsewhere could still search through those sites to find and purchase Datalink’s infringing products. Within its lawsuit against Datalink in British Columbia, Canada, Equustek moved for a preliminary injunction prohibiting Google, a nonparty, from including any of Datalink’s websites in the results of any search on Google’s search engines worldwide, arguing that the search results facilitated unlawful infringement. Google objected that the court lacked jurisdiction to issue an injunction governing Google’s activity outside Canada. The trial court considered the injunction request.