The court has ordered Google to pay 76 million euros in damages to the Walloon start-up Proxistore. The two companies have been at odds for some time.
Google must pay 76 million euros to Proxistore. This was decided by the business court of Walloon Brabant. The court ordered Citibank to freeze the amount in Google’s account in Ireland. This is according to Belga.
On February 12th, Google suspended Proxistore’s advertising campaigns without explanation. This also happened on February 1st. In total, the campaigns were blocked for 72 hours. The start-up then went to court and demanded one million euros in damages for each hour that advertisements were blocked. The court ruled in favor of Proxistore, both on the most recent claim and the incident on February 1st.
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Proxistore is a competitor of Google. The company developed a technology in 2011 that enables highly localized advertisements on international websites. The start-up obtained a Belgian and European patent for this, in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Google disagrees and claims that the blocking was due to unpaid bills. The court rejected this argument twice. Because Google is not paying the damages, a European seizure procedure has now been initiated.