Norwich Order

A Norwich order, more fully a Norwich Pharmacal order, is a remedy in the legal systems of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth jurisdictions by which a court compels an innocent third party who has become mixed up in wrongdoing, such as an internet service provider, platform or host, to disclose information, most often the identity of an otherwise unknown wrongdoer. It is the functional Commonwealth counterpart to a United States subpoena used to identify an anonymous defendant.

The doctrine takes its name from the 1974 House of Lords decision Norwich Pharmacal Co. v Customs and Excise Commissioners, which concerned unidentified importers of a patented product and established that a person caught up in others' wrongdoing has a duty to help the injured party by revealing the wrongdoers' identities. It is now frequently used to unmask anonymous online actors, including authors of defamatory posts, copyright infringers and fraudsters, by ordering the intermediary to hand over subscriber or account data. For Reddit, Norwich orders are the principal mechanism through which courts outside the United States can require the disclosure of an anonymous user's information.