A ruling on Tuesday from the European Union’s highest court will stop Google Inc. from selling their brand names as advertising keywords to unauthorized sellers and counterfeiters in Europe.

French companies, led by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, want to limit the sale of their trademarks on Google’s automated Adwords program. They are afraid that counterfeiters could buy a keyword such as “Louis Vuitton” and use it to sell fake bags.

The European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that Google does not violate trademark law if indeed counterfeiters buy brand names as ad keywords. However, national courts would have to decide whether the company knowingly accepts these ads.

Google will be pardoned if it can prove that it will work quickly to remove an ad once it is learned that it is misusing a trademark. It would also be free from liability if the automatic ad system is judged to be “merely technical, automatic and passive.”

In all European countries except Ireland and Britain, the company says it takes down and blocks ads and keywords which misuse a trademark once the brand owner has complained.

Google earns the majority of its revenue by selling advertising triggered by keywords. When someone searches for “vintage wines” or visits a partner site that mentions those words, advertising for a vintage wine dealer might appear to the side. Sometimes, a keyword that is a company’s brand name can trigger an ad for a competitor or counterfeiters.

Google has often been sued for trademark violations in courts around the world, and it generally overcomes without changing its practices. In America and most other countries, Google typically accepts trademarks used as those keyword triggers, but it does not place limits on what can appear in the ads themselves.