On Wednesday, the five judges of Australia's High Court gave their verdict in the landmark AdWords case; ruling that Internet search giant Google's policy to allow companies to purchase AdWords that contained the names of their rivals could not be deemed a violation of fair trade law.

In their unanimous ruling in favor of Google - marking a significant legal victory for the company -, the judges said that Google could not be held responsible for the misleading advertisements which run on its site.

With the judges clearly stating in their verdict that Google had not violated the trade laws, the High Court's ruling has overturned the April 2012 ruling by a Federal Court which had found four advertisements - purchased on the Google site during the March 2006 to July 2007 period - were misleading, and had violated Australia's Trade Practices Act 1974.

However, Google appealed the Federal Court's ruling with the argument that, since it was only acting as a publisher, it did not have any responsibility for the content and representations which the AdWords purchasers made on its site.

Putting a seal of approval on the argument put forth by Google, the High Court said in its Wednesday verdict: "Ordinary and reasonable users of the Google search engine would have understood that the representations conveyed by the sponsored links were those of the advertisers, and would not have concluded that Google adopted or endorsed the representations."