A lawsuit accusing Google of misappropriating trade secrets from geo-location specialist Digital Envoy may proceed, the U.S. District Court in San Jose ruled last Friday, denying Google's motion for summary judgment, CNET writes. "Since the language contained in the license is susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation, summary judgment is improper," according to the ruling. But the court dismissed some charges, including claims of unfair competition, because the two parties were not direct rivals.

The companies had a licensing agreement that relied on Digital's IP technology to pinpoint the location of web visitors so that Google could better serve sponsored search results. Digital objected when in 2003 Google expanded the use of the technology to serve targeted advertisements onto third-party sites through AdSense.

Digital Envoy filed its lawsuit in March 2004 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. A month later Google countersued asking for a declaratory judgment. The suit was moved from Georgia to San Jose.