Jaani Riordan appeared for the Defendants and Henry Edwards (led by Eric Metcalfe of Monckton Chambers) appeared for the Claimant (“Mr Ansari”) in an application made by the First Defendant (“Google UK”) to strike out or summarily dismiss Mr Ansari’s claims for copyright infringement, misuse of private information, breach of data protection legislation and breach of confidence.
Mr Ansari claimed to be the proprietor of the copyright subsisting in a draft report and schedules, to which he alleged that the Defendants had published hyperlinks through the Google Search engine. The works were hosted on a third party website which had published articles about Mr Ansari, which were the subject of parallel Queen’s Bench proceedings alleging defamation. Google UK’s evidence was that it had never owned or operated the Google Search or Google Analytics services and was not a proper party to the claim.
The Court made an order striking out and summarily dismissing all claims against Google UK. Where a claim is made against multiple defendants, there must be some explanation as to the role played by each defendant, including the primary facts and the inferences that can be drawn from them. It was not open to Mr Ansari to advance unparticularised, high level allegations against “the Defendants”, without some indication of the relevant duty which Google UK had breached. Further, the Claimant could not point to the decision in Google Spain as a reason for bringing a claim against Google UK. Accordingly, the existing Particulars of Claim, draft Amended Particulars of Claim and evidence before the Court disclosed no reasonable grounds for pursuing a claim against Google UK.