The automated system Microsoft uses to send copyright infringement notices to Google has made a series of embarrassing mistakes in recent months.

Its latest error came last week in a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice telling Google to remove Web search links that allegedly infringe the copyrights for Microsoft Office. (TorrentFreak reported on the mishap earlier today.) Among the 635 allegedly infringing URLs, Microsoft listed four from Microsoft.com itself: A SharePoint tutorial, a database conversion tutorial, a page describing how to use digital certificates, and a Microsoft customer support forum thread that discusses license keys.

More troublingly, the DMCA notice listed an open source project for creating and sharing SharePoint sites as infringing Microsoft copyright. Microsoft also asked Google to remove a link to the Wikipedia page on Microsoft Office 2007.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has asked Google to take down links to Microsoft.com. Microsoft has also labeled links to the perfectly legitimate OpenOffice software suite as infringing Microsoft Office copyrights.

Fortunately, it seems that Google ignored the erroneous requests and still provides search results for the pages we've mentioned.

To be fair, the latest takedown notice also targets many torrent links to pirated software. Microsoft notifies Google of thousands of allegedly infringing links each week, so a few mistakes are bound to happen. But Microsoft (which uses a service called LeakID to send out DMCA notices) has said it wants to eliminate false accusations. "We apologize when a notice is mistakenly directed to non-infringing content and take immediate action," Microsoft said after one recent such incident. "We are committed to fixing the process that led to this result." We've asked Microsoft today if it has made any progress, and we will provide an update if we hear anything.

UPDATE: Microsoft is apparently getting more serious about fixing this problem. In a statement sent to Ars, the company said, “Microsoft is committed to ensuring that enforcement measures are appropriate and completely accurate. We are investigating the circumstances of this takedown and have instructed the vendor that it is no longer authorized to send notices on our behalf.”