Luxembourg — A group of Belgian French-language newspapers publishers said Tuesday they are seeking as much as $77 million from search engine Google Inc. in damages related to a lawsuit alleging the search giant over the right to link to and cache their news stories in violation of copyright law.
Copiepresse, a copyright group for newspapers in Belgium, said it had summoned Google to appear again before a Brussels court in September that will decide on their claim that they suffered damages of between US$51.7 million and US$77.5 million, Margaret Boribon, the group’s secretary-general, said yesterday.
Google has already lost previous rounds of a court fight with Copiepresse, which has argued that Google had violated copyright law by failing to secure permission before using headlines and snippets of Belgian French- and German-language newspaper articles in its Google News aggregation service and by providing links to cached copies of the articles in the search results on its Belgium search engine.
Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, and the Belgian newspapers started discussions on a possible agreement shortly after the Feb. 13, 2007, court ruling. Google appealed, saying it was a way to keep its options open in case the negotiations broke down.
"Any attempts to reach an agreement . . . have failed," Boribon said.
Google, which has disputed that ruling, said Tuesday that it had not received the new Copiepresse legal summons yet and still awaits the outcome of its appeal.
"We strongly believe that Google News and Google Web search are legal, and that we have not violated Copiepresse’s copyright," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. "This is why we are appealing the February 2007 ruling. We consider that this new claim for damages is groundless, and we intend to vigorously challenge it."
Stricker declined to provide further details about the status of the lawsuit. Copiepresse representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
"A court last year ruled Google violated Belgian copyright laws by publishing links to articles on Google News without permission."
Last year Google lost a court case filed by the newspapers that forced it to remove headlines and links to news stories posted on its Google News service and stored in its search engine’s cache without the copyright owners’ permission.
The compensation are in addition to a daily fine of $39,000 the court last year ordered Google to pay until it removes all Belgian news content. Google removed links to Belgian papers it had on its search engine and on Google News.
In addition to the damages, Copiepresse is also asking to have Google publish "in a visible and clear manner" the court ruling from last year on Google.be and news.Google.be for 20 days, the group said. If Google does not publish the ruling, the group said it would seek a $1.5 million daily fine.
It said the losses were calculated by a professor at the University Libre de Bruxelles and damages should be based on articles stored via Google Search since April 13, 2001 and Google News since it launched in Belgium in 2006.
The Brussels Court of First Instance ruled in February 2007 that Google could not call on exemptions to copyright law, such as claiming "fair use" for Google News’ publication of press articles when it displays headlines, a few lines of text, photos and links to the original page.
The company claims its Google News service is "entirely legal."
However, the two sides settled part of their dispute in May 2007 when Google removed "caches" — data that is saved on the search engine’s own sites to allow quicker access — from its links to the newspapers’ websites. The agreement allowed Internet users to access Belgian newspapers again on Google’s website in that country.
Buzz about possible fines against the search giant, however, is not new. Back in November 2006, just after an initial court ruling against Google, there were reports that Copiepresse was seeking some 34 million euros in fines, although Google promptly denied that was the case.
Copiepresse has feuded in the past with other Web companies, reaching a settlement with Microsoft.