Jobs portal Jobindex has filed a suit against Google, claiming the tech giant is breaching copyright and marketing laws by making job ads posted to Jobindex available on the Google for Jobs service without permission.

“It’s like if you sell counterfeit goods, you have a responsibility to not just say ‘I bought it from someone else’,” the CEO of Jobindex Kaare Danielsen said at Denmark’s commercial court Sø- og Handelsretten, in comments reported by news wire Ritzau from the court.

“Google has not respected our copyright. We have been doing this for 28 years without any problems, then Google comes along and won’t respect it,” he said.

Jobindex is happy to be included in Google search results but objects to its ads being copied, Danielsen stressed.

The case, which began on Wednesday, relates to advanced algorithms used by Google and must be assessed by judges with technical expertise, Ritzau writes.

Industry interest organisation Danske Medier brought the case on behalf of Jobindex, demanding five million kroner in compensation for loss of earnings.

In court, a series of job ads – claimed by Jobindex to have been copied – were reviewed.

Google’s political director for the Nordic region Christine Sørensen said the case was “wide of the mark”.

“It’s an accusation we weren’t able to do anything about,” she said.

If the job notices had been reported individually, Google can respond by removing them, she said.

The case is important for Jobindex but is also principle in nature, Danske Medier’s senior lawyer Holger Rosendal said.

“We want to protect the interests of our members. This case is highly significant if it turns out that you can just copy content, including for editorial content owned by media,” he said in the court.

Google has recently faced criticism outside of Denmark from the publishing sector because of its new AI Overviews service.

Critics say the service, which uses AI to scrape existing media articles to give users a fully formed answer to a query without having to leave Google, breaks a contract because Google is using the intellectual property of media and publishers but no longer enabling website footfall and advertising revenue in return.

A verdict in the Danish case is forthcoming following the completion of court proceedings.