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.

The Google Suggest tool proposes search queries as searchers type the first letters of the queries. The suggestions it makes are generated by popular searches as gathered by Google’s index. WebProNews has reported on apparent racial and ethnic slurs completed by the tool in the past.

When a user enters the keyword, [serverscheck], says the company, Google suggests ways to find pirated versions of the company’s software. Philipp Lensen has a screenshot here.

“That is comparable to a person calling enquiries to ask where a well-known brand of handbag is for sale and being suggested to look for illegal counterfeit handbags,” said the company in a statement.

When ServersCheck complained to Google, the search company said that illegal websites should be reported so they can be taken out of the index. As for the Google Suggest feature, though, Google refused to alter the suggestions.

Because Google has engineered the suggestions to omit sexually explicit keywords, credit card numbers and trace numbers from courier companies, ServersCheck says it had no choice but to file suit.

“We regret that Google cannot comply with the simple request of ServersCheck and that we are forced as a result to request the cessation of these dishonest practices via the courts,” says Maarten Van Laere, CEO of ServersCheck.

“The damage suffered by us will only grow as a result of the increasing popularity of such search bars. As an innovative Belgian SMB it is already difficult to compete at world level. It becomes even more difficult when respected and leading companies like Google destroy this innovation by suggesting software piracy.”

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