Court of Justice of the European Union Upholds “Right to be Forgotten” in Google Case (May 13, 2014) [1]
On May 13, 2014, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the Court) held [3] in Google Inc. and Google Spain v. González that the operators of search engines can be obliged to erase, upon request, search results in the form of links that appear when the requesting person’s name is searched. According to the press release [4], the Court held that “if it is found, following a request by the data subject, that the inclusion of those links in the list is, at this point in time, incompatible with [Directive 95/46/EC [5] of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995], the links and information in the list of results must be erased.” Directive 95/46/EC protects individuals “with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.” The Court held that inclusion would be incompatible with the Directive “where, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the data appear to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed.”