2016 March 14

Sciquest Inc. v. Hansen, 2016 ONSC 1488

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice held that Ontario had jurisdiction over a defamation lawsuit based on 18 blog posts or articles posted by the defendant on WordPress.com between August 2014 and November 2015 and “disseminated on [the defendant’s] Twitter page or by way of a link to the full blog post.” The court noted: “It appears that in 2015, [the blog] was viewed over 105,000 times by users in over 160 jurisdictions” and that “10,588 of those viewers or readers were located in Canada.” “One can readily infer that many of those are in Ontario.” The Court also found that each of the articles was sent to the “Twitter feeds” of 355 followers located in Ontario. Further, in 7 cases, somebody in Ottawa, Ontario “re-tweeted” other Twitter users. On this basis, including the fact that Sciquest had a business presence, customers and a reputation in Ontario, the test for jurisdiction of the Ontario court had been satisfied. The Court also rejected defence arguments that the plaintiff’s lawsuit in Ontario constituted “libel tourism.“