January 12, 2015, New York, N.Y. – The Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina recently ruled that search engines Google and Yahoo! are generally not responsible for third party content that appears in online search results. The Argentine Supreme Court said that search engines are only responsible for infringing third-party content if they have knowledge that the content is infringing and they fail to remove or block access to it.
"This is a landmark case," said Dámaso Pardo of PAGBAM IP, GALA's Argentina member. "It's an important step in helping to define the liability of search engines and other websites for third party content."
In this case, Belén Rodriguez v. Google, a former fashion model sued search engines Google and Yahoo! alleging that including links or thumbnails to pornographic photos of her violated her privacy and publicity rights. In finding that the search engines were not liable, the Argentine Supreme Court may be the first case of its kind decided by the highest court of any country in South America.
"This is a very important precedent for Latin America, where there has been little exploration into the liability of search engines regarding the content of third party websites," said Ariela Agosin, the GALA Americas President and a Partner at Albagli Zaliasnik in Chile.
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