LONDON — Google says it will take "significant efforts" to remove abusive material about a businessman who brought the search giant to court over articles in search results he said made false allegations about him.

Daniel Hegglin, a former Morgan Stanley banker who used to live in London but now resides in Hong Kong, requested that Google block anonymously authored posts about him from its search results. His case first came before a court in July, and the settlement announced Monday before the trial was scheduled to begin. Had the case gone to trial and been decided in Hegglin's favor, it would have set a precedent implying that Google would have to remove any result with false information from its search results.

Google had asked Hegglin to provide a list of URLs in question, which it would then remove. However, Hegglin argued this process was expensive, time-consuming and ineffective; he claimed more than 3,600 websites contained abusive and untrue material about him, including ones that labeled him a murderer, pedophile and a Nazi. He was also seeking an order to prevent abusive posts being processed in searches in England and Wales.

The issues in the case go beyond those in the "right to be forgotten" ruling, which allows old, inaccurate or irrelevant data to be taken out of search results if the person involved requests it. In Hegglin's case, the material in question is reportedly defamatory and his case sought to have Google remove the material proactively, without him supplying it with the URLs.

Google states on its support website that if a person wants a photo, link to a profile or webpage removed, he or she must contact the website owner to ask them to remove that information. But if they are seeking to have sensitive personal information removed, such as a bank account number, they can request to have that information removed from search results. Last month, Google said it has received 145,000 requests since the "right to be forgotten" ruling by the European Court of Justice in May.

The details of the settlement were not revealed, but a statement was read in court.

“The settlement includes significant efforts on Google’s part to remove the abusive material from Google-hosted websites and from its search results,” Hegglin’s barrister, Hugh Tomlinson QC, said. “Mr. Hegglin will now concentrate his energies on bringing the persons responsible for this campaign of harassment to justice.”

Image: Google

Google's lawyer, Antony White, said the company was sympathetic to Hegglin, who had received an "exceptional" amount of Internet abuse.

He said Google wasn't responsible for policing the web, but would "continue to apply its procedures that have been developed to assist with the removal of content which breaches applicable local laws."

Right now, all we know is that Google will be "taking steps" to remove the information, but at the time of writing, a search still fetched results containing the allegations.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.