Earlier this month, a judge in Tokyo's District Court granted a provisional injunction against Google ordering the search engine to delete a particular set of search results. The plaintiff claimed his privacy rights had been violated by the inclusion of news articles containing information over 10 years old suggesting that he had a criminal past. The plaintiff alleged that his claim for damages was "immediate and actual" as he had received death threats because of the articles. The court's written opinion has not been made public and it is as yet unclear whether the Japanese courts will recognise the "right to be forgotten" as the European Court of Justice did in May.
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