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A Spanish court ruled that Google Inc. must remove links from a search on a man’s name, eight months after the case made a European Union court confirm a so-called “right to be forgotten” on the Internet.

Google must cut the link to a notice on social security debtors in La Vanguardia newspaper because it was outdated information about the man, the Audencia Nacional ruled, according to a statement on its website Friday in Spain. Freedom of information rights aren’t infringed because the original content is still available in the newspaper’s online archive, it said.

Google’s refusal to remove a link to a 1998 newspaper notice on a search of Mario Costeja Gonzalez’s name pitched the operator of the world’s largest search engine against Spain’s data-protection authority. The European Court of Justice backed the privacy regulator last year, saying all search engines should cut links on request if the information is outdated and irrelevant.

The court statement didn’t name the man, but refers to the EU court case that does. The Google search link he objected to was taken down last year shortly after the May court ruling from the EU’s top court.

Google declined to comment on the case because it had only just received the press release, said Al Verney, a spokesman for the company in Brussels. The EU court ruling provides guidance to national courts to rule on such cases, he said.

The Spanish court said it would use the EU guidelines to rule on many other similar cases.

Google has received 204,979 requests to remove 743,250 links from its website to date, according to its website.