A California judge is putting a halt to a Canadian court order for internet giant Google to delist some of its search results worldwide.
It says Canada's top court overstepped its bounds and the right to free speech online.
In June, the Supreme Court upheld a 2015 B.C. court ruling that ordered the popular search engine to wipe out references to a former distributor accused of stealing trade secrets from a small British Columbia company.
Google unsuccessfully argued before Canada's high court that Canadian courts didn't have legal authority to impose such an injunction.
About one month after the Supreme Court decision, Google turned to the courts in California to squash the order, arguing it couldn't be enforced in the United States because it violated sweeping free speech rights under the First Amendment, and federal legislation that granted internet services like Google immunity from listing content created by third parties.
A U.S. district court judge in California agreed, saying that Datalink Technologies Gateways provided the information at issue for Burnaby-based Equustek Solutions Inc.; Google merely provides links to websites and "short snippets of their contents."
