Google just put another lawsuit behind it – at least until ServersCheck appeals a Belgian court’s decision. The company had claimed that Google’s search engine helped users crack its software. But, for the time being, ServersCheck’s suit has been dismissed.
As reported by Jeremy Kirk, “The lawsuit, filed in May 2006, sought to make Google modify Suggest to not offer up piracy-related terms but did not seek financial damages.” That seems unusual even before one learns the facts of the situation – the CEO of ServersCheck, Maarten Van Laere, claims that piracy “costs the company up to €100,000 a week” and that his company “spent €25,000 on legal fees for the suit” ($133,000 and $33,000, respectively).
But, regardless of those expenses (and ServerCheck’s decision to not recover them), the ruling court decided that “Google can’t be found liable for finding Web pages that may be involved in illegal activity based on search terms. The court also rejected an argument the Suggest feature offered a misleading advertisement, since that’s not the intended function of Suggest.”
That puts Google on something of a roll, in terms of winning lawsuits – earlier this week, the infamous KinderStart case was dismissed. And it’s possible that the ServersCheck suit will remain in the “win” category, even if further interactions between the companies occur. “It doesn’t have to come to court proceedings,” said Van Laere.
But it may come to court proceedings, since, according to Google’s senior product counsel for Europe, Trevor Callahan, the search engine company expected a victory and does not plan any changes.
