Hogan Lovells secures win before the Italian Supreme Court for Google on the right to be forgotten

The appellant – a renowned attorney and scientific director of an online university – claimed that the conclusion of a criminal proceedings involving him, resulting in an order of dismissal, automatically granted him a right to removal by virtue of the annotation made by the court registry under Article 64-ter of the implementing provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as introduced by the Cartabia Reform.

For the first time in proceedings on points of law, the decision addressed the coordination between this provision and Article 17 GDPR, clarifying that the former does not establish an autonomous "national right to be forgotten". Instead, it merely outlines a procedural method for activating the right to erasure or removal "pursuant to and within the limits of Article 17 GDPR".

The Supreme Court thus upheld the rulings of the Italian Data Protection Authority and the Court of Naples, confirming that the annotation made by court registries under Article 64-ter of the implementing provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure creates a rebuttable presumption in favour of the interested party but does not exempt a concrete balancing between the right to data protection and the rights to freedom of expression, information, and historical-cultural documentation.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court ruled out any automatic correlation between dismissal or acquittal and removal from search engine results, holding that lawfully published information may remain accessible online as long as its continued availability is justified by overriding public interest considerations, assessed in light of the individual’s public role, the relevance of the news, and the broader informational context.

In the specific case, the Supreme Court deemed that the continued availability of URLs updated with the favourable outcome of the proceedings served an informational and safeguarding function, confirming the lawfulness of the partial removal already granted by the search engine.

Hogan Lovells assisted Google both before the Supreme Court and in the previous merits proceedings before the Court of Naples with a team led by partner Massimiliano Masnada and senior associates Ambra Pacitti and Giacomo Bertelli.

The decision marks a significant milestone in defining the boundaries of the right to be forgotten following the Cartabia Reform, reaffirming the primacy of Article 17 GDPR and the need for a case-by-case balancing of fundamental rights carried out by search engines when assessing removal requests.