Google and Belgian newspaper group Copiepresse are attempting to resolve the conflict out of court.
Belgium becomes the focal point for a heated confrontation between Google, and the news management organization that beat it in court.
Brussels — Google Inc. has filed an appeal against a Belgian court’s February ruling that it violated Belgian copyright law, but says talks are ongoing and it hopes to avoid further court action.
Google does not lose in court very often, but they took what for them equated to a humbling beating from Copiepresse last year.
Copiepresse sued Google last year alleging that the search giant’s use of headlines and snippets of Belgian newspaper articles in its Google News aggregation service, and its practice of providing links to cached copies of the articles in its main Web search results, violated copyright.
The Brussels Court of First Instance ruled in favor of Copiepresse, and the two parties have been in discussions since.
That decision included forcing Google to post the judgment for five days on its Belgian portal. The company did so, in a small font size, and their subsequent posts on their official blog made it clear they were not happy about this.
Google and Copiepresse subsequently reached a partial settlement of their differences. But a complete resolution will have to wait for an appeals process to take place.
An appeal hearing is scheduled for July 17 in the Belgian court, but a person familiar with the situation said the company will use the date to request an extension of its right to appeal, pending negotiations.
“If you want to keep open the ability to appeal, you have to lodge an appeal by a certain date,” said Google spokeswoman Rachel Whetstone, explaining why Google last month scheduled an appeal hearing in the Belgian court on July 17.
“We are having discussions with Copiepresse and we are pleased to be discussing with them – let us see what happens.”
“The two parties will ask the judge to delay the calendar of the appeal to allow for negotiations,” said Copiepresse Secretary-general Margaret Boribon.
The court’s schedule required Google to file its appeal 10 days ago; otherwise a ruling against it from February would have become permanent.
But there will be no appeals hearing as such this month, and the two sides will merely ask the court for an extension while they continue their talks, said Catherine Anciaux, a legal advisor for Copiepresse.
Google and Copiepresse in May struck a partial deal on how the copyrighted French- and German-language articles may be used by the Internet search giant.
The deal allows Google to once again publish snippets and links to the articles in question, since the publishers are now using Google’s “noarchive” option which means the articles can only be seen by going to the newspaper’s own Web site. The “noarchive” tag also stops Google from keeping older stories in its files.
Google was also fined, 25,000 (US$34,000) for each day that it delayed removing the newspapers’ content from its Web site. It has not yet paid any fines, which will be considered as part of the appeals process, the Google spokeswoman said.
Google has said it has still not paid any fines to Copiepresse, nor has it paid for the right to publish the links as Copiepresse has demanded.
Google maintains that linking to the content is legal and provides a useful service for the general public and the newspapers, because it drives traffic to their sites. Copiepresse has said it wants to be included in Google News but that it should be compensated, by an advertising revenue sharing agreement or in some other way.
The two sides clearly hope to settle the matter out of court, however.
Neither Copiepresse nor Google gave further details on the specific negotiations.