Albert Yeung's court victory over Google shows need for law to adapt

Entertainment tycoon Albert Yeung Sau-shing's court victory over Google earlier this month has raised fresh concerns about the use of libel laws to restrict the free flow of information on the internet. Yeung was given the green light by the High Court to pursue a novel defamation action against the US-based internet giant. He complains that when people google his name, they are prompted by the search engine's autocomplete function to use the term "albert yeung triad", damaging his reputation.

This, it seems, is the first case of its kind concerning autocomplete to be heard by a court anywhere in the common law world. And the stakes are high. Google's lawyer, senior counsel Gerard McCoy, told the judge the entire basis of the internet could be compromised.

Certainly, our ability to easily access the websites we want could be undermined if search engines are required to police the results automatically generated by tools such as autocomplete.

Deputy High Court Judge Marlene Ng May-ling's ruling is a preliminary one. She found the Emperor Group chairman to have a "good arguable case" against Google. This means - subject to any appeal by the company - the action can proceed to a full hearing. So the big decisions are yet to come.

The case is one of many in recent times in which courts find themselves striving to apply rules fashioned more than a century ago to today's world of internet surfing and social media.

During the Yeung case, Google's search engine was compared to a librarian sifting through index cards to identify relevant books for a reader interested in a particular topic. Among the more than 50 cases referred to Madam Justice Ng by lawyers in the case was one from England in the 1930s involving the posting of an item on a golf club's notice board and another dating back 150 years involving a newspaper article about the Duke of Brunswick.