Publisher advocacy organizations are praising the Supreme Court of Canada for upholding a ruling that will require Google to de-index any websites that unlawfully sell the intellectual property of other companies.

The ruling was initiated when B.C. technology company Equustek accused another tech company, Datalink Technology Gateways, of counterfeit and selling its products online under another name. As part of the lawsuit, Equustek requested that Google wipe all search results related to Datalink websites. The search-engine company complied, but only for its Canadian site, Google.ca. The Supreme Court of B.C. then ordered Google to expand the results to include all global searches, a decision which the company argued violates its users’ freedom of expression.

The Association of Canadian Publishers, alongside the Canadian Publishers’ Council, intervened in the Google v. Equustek case. According to a press release from the ACP: “The Equustek decision will be important to book publishers given the widespread online piracy of books. The Court’s decision is expected to support efforts to curb internet-based infringement of a range of digital products, including ebooks, audiobooks, and scanned print books.”

ACP states that the court’s decision affirms the “importance of freedom of expression,” and that the “de-indexing of illegal content by search engines does not limit this freedom,” as suggested by critics.