Mississippi’s attorney general, Jim Hood, on Friday called a “time out” in his legal battle against Google, shortly after the search giant filed a lawsuit against him.

Hood has challenged Google to limit third-party information available through its search and advertising services. The company says his request violates the open principles of the internet and was made at the behest of a major film lobbying firm. Major Hollywood studios are trying to crack down on the distribution of pirated movies on the internet.

“In an attempt to resolve some of the problems the states’ chief law enforcement officers have raised,” Hood said in a letter on Friday, “I am calling a time out, so that cooler heads may prevail.”

He also said he would reach out to Google’s legal team “to negotiate a peaceful resolution”.

On 27 October, Hood issued a 79-page subpoena, saying the state had reasonable grounds to believe Google had violated the Mississippi consumer protections act and asking that the company turn over information about its search engine and sales of illegal drugs, pornography and other materials.

In its lawsuit, Google said it was “an enormously burdensome subpoena” and that Hood’s complaints were not in the jurisdiction of state law.

The company also accused Hood of violating federal law by attempting to intervene in its search results at the bidding of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The New York Times reported this week that documents obtained through the Sony hack and open records requests showed that the MPAA had created a lobbying campaign, Project Goliath, on behalf of major studios to get attorney generals to challenge Google with subpoenas and lawsuits. According to the emails, Hood is a key figure in the campaign.

In a statement responding to Google’s lawsuit Kate Bedingfield, an MPAA spokesperson, said: “Google’s effort to position itself as a defender of free speech is shameful. Freedom of speech should never be used as a shield for unlawful activities and the internet is not a license to steal.”

Google said in the lawsuit it agrees that “much” of the content Hood is trying to block is “objectionable”, but said it was voluntarily working against such content on its own. The lawsuit says: “… If a state attorney general can punish, irrespective of well-established federal law, any search engine or video-sharing platform whenever he finds third-party content he deems objectionable, search engines and video-sharing platforms cannot operate in their current form.”

Google asked that while the case is pending, the court should prevent Hood from enforcing the subpoena or bringing criminal charges against the company, with a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.