There is a “right to be forgotten” by internet search engines – European Court of Justice

22 May 2014 by Rosalind English

Case C-131/12 Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) and Mario Costeja González – read judgment

The CJEU has declined to follow Opinion of AG Jääskinen in this case involving a challenge under the 1995 Data Protection Directive by a lawyer who objected to a newspaper reference referring to old bankruptcy proceedings against him in a Google search. See my earlier post on the opinion. Lorna Woods’ excellent report on the CJEU’s reasoning can be found on Inforrm’s blog so I won’t replicate her effort here. Suffice it to say that the outpouring of indignation in the press, the references to “hundreds” of requests from celebrities and other people who want to stop harmful information about them appearing, suggests that this ruling has opened a can of worms, not to mention the byzantine difficulties of enforcing the ruling by requiring search companies to become their own data control regulators.