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Deutsch: Belgien: Google verliert Klage wegen Urheberrechtsverletzung
Google lost its appeal in front of the Belgian appeals court which upheld an earlier ruling, having found the company guilty of infringing the copyright of newspapers, in the case introduced in 2006 by Copiepresse.
In 2006, Copiepress, an agency acting for newspapers, sued Google for allegedly infringing the copyright of newspapers when linking, on its Google News service, to content from newspaper websites or copies of sections of stories.
A Belgian judge ruled that Google had to remove all the content referring to Belgian newspaper stories from its services and the Court of First Instance in Belgium upheld that ruling in February 2007.
Google appealed the decision and argued that Google News was fully consistent with applicable copyright laws and considered that US law should have applied in the case because the company posts the articles of the Belgian sites from the US. However, the court, based on the Berne Convention, estimated that only the Belgian law could be applicable and that the distribution through the Google.be website of works that are protected by copyright in Belgium was illegal and that it did not matter that the posts were made automatically by robots from abroad.
The court also estimated that one didn't need to read the entire article to understand the information posted by Google, that Google News could not be assimilated with press review and it infringed the paternity right by not mentioning the name of the author.
The court's decision asked Google to remove all links to material from Belgian newspapers in French (the rulings do not apply to Flemish newspapers). Failing to comply with the court's decision may bring Google a fine of about 25 000 Euro per day.
"References with short titles and direct links to the sources is not only legal, but also encourages the users to read the online newspapers" stated Al Verney, spokesperson for Google.
While Copiepress welcomes the decision, Google reminded the agency that it is not the only search engine making reference to online contents but that actually, this is common practice with most search engines.
It also seems Google wants to bring the case to a higher court.
Google infringes copyright when its services link to newspaper sites,
Belgian court rules (10.05.2011)
http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=11911
Court's decision (only in French, 5.05.2011)
http://copiepresse.be/Copiepresse5mai2011.pdf
Google Busted for Copyright Violation in Belgium (7.05.2011) http://www.pcworld.com/article/227379/google_busted_for_copyright_viol...
Copiepresse press release (only in French, 5.05.2011)
http://www.copiepresse.be/Communique%20de%20presse%20condamnation%20Go...
Google loses the Copiepresse case in appeal (only in French, 9.05.2011)
http://datanews.rnews.be/fr/ict/actualite/apercu/2011/05/09/google-per...
New condemnation of Google News in Belgium (only in French, 9.05.2011)
http://lexpansion.lexpress.fr/high-tech/nouvelle-condamnation-de-googl...
EDRi-gram: Belgium court backs decision against Google (14.02.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.3/google-belgium