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The EU 'Right to Be Forgotten' Judgment

By Andre Bywater and Jonathan Armstrong
November 30, 2014

When the European Union's highest court, the European Court of Justice, handed down a controversial landmark ruling in a matter commonly referred to as the “right to be forgotten” case, it sent ripples that impact online privacy in the United States. The core of the case concerns the obligations of search engine operators under the EU Data Protection Directive. But at a wider level, the ruling's ramifications go beyond the EU, as it imposes extra-territorial privacy obligations on U.S. businesses. Counsel for e-commerce organizations therefore need to be aware of the legal compliance impact that it may have on U.S. businesses.

Background

The background to the case is straightforward enough. In 2010, a complaint was lodged by a Spanish national, Mario Costeja Gonz'lez, with the Agencia Espa'ola de Protecci'n de Datos (“the Spanish Data Protection Agency”) against La Vanguardia Ediciones SL (“La Vanguardia”), a Spanish newspaper publisher, and two companies, Google Spain and Google Inc. Costeja Gonz'lez was unhappy that when Internet users entered his name into the Google search engine, the list of results would display links to two pages of La Vanguardia dated January and March 1998. Those particular two pages contained an announcement for a real-estate auction organized following attachment proceedings for the recovery of social security debts owed by Costeja Gonz'lez. According to Costeja Gonz'lez, these proceedings had been fully resolved a number of years ago and so reference to them was now consequently entirely irrelevant.

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