France Reins In Google Digitisation Project

US internet search engine company Google was sentenced by a French tribunal to pay a €300,000 euro fine to French publishing company La Martinière on 18 December but plans to appeal, according to sources.

According to the judgment posted on Legalis, a web-based resource for lawyers, available here (in French), Google lost the lawsuit brought against it by La Martinière for publishing extracts of books on the internet through its Google Books digitisation programme without the publishing company’s permission. It was found that Google had engaged in counterfeiting acts by doing so. Google has one month to comply with the judgment or it would have to pay an additional €10,000 euro fine for each day beyond the one month grace period.

Some commentators have said that this decision to punish Google might not be in the best interests of French authors and the diffusion of French culture, because their work will be less easily available online. Google France has announced that it will appeal in the coming weeks to try to overturn the judgment, according to the Agence France Presse (in French).

In the United States, copyright disputes over Google’s book scanning project led to a settlement agreement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The settlement has to be approved by the court and a final settlement/fairness hearing is planned for 18 February 2010. (IPW, IP-Burble, 20 November 2009).