An Illinois court may decide whether or not the Google Email Uploader infringes on technology developed by LimitNone. With a potential market of 50 million users at $19 per license evaporating with the debut of Google’s competing product, LimitNone wants a piece of the action.

CNET said LimitNone filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois against Google. The company contends its product, renamed gMove at Google’s suggestion, helped Google overcome problems with migrating data from Microsoft Outlook to Gmail.

LimitNone may have issues beyond the potential loss of the market within Google Apps Premier Edition. Google released the Email Uploader as an open source product:

It is Apache 2.0 licensed open source software, and is governed by the terms of the included license file. This means you may modify the tool to better suit your needs.

If LimitNone’s trade secrets were used in Email Uploader, any developer can view them, or at least Google’s take on them, in the freely available source code for the product.

LimitNone claims that Google blocked the company from an estimated "$950 million dollar opportunity" by developing its "Google Email Uploader" as a competitor to LimitNone’s similar tool called gMove.

LimitNone says it created gMove as part of an official Google developer program and was told that Google would not develop a similar tool. The suit alleges that Google broke its promise and developed its own software based on LimitNone’s technology.

In the suit LimitNone alleges that a Google employee told the company the opportunity was "just too big to come from someone else."

gMove does not have a patent, but LimitNone and its attorneys, Kelley Drye & Warren, are hoping to prove Google copied the company’s trade secrets.

Google launched its free competing email migration tool, "Google Email Uploader" earlier this year, which the suit claims is "almost identical" to gMove and that "both operate under a similar conceptual design."

After Google began to compete with it, Palatine, Illinois-based LimitNone focused its business on the emerging market for business software developed to work on the Apple iPhone.