(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The Belgium newspaper Association Copiepresse has initiated a legal complaint against the European Commission (EC) arguing that it infringes its copyright through the NewsBrief and NewsExplorer aggregation services.

Copiepresse became famous for its copyright suit against Google and other search engines claiming copyright infringement over the aggregation services done by the search engines. The association has initiated a new action in the Belgian Court of Seizures considering that the European Commission is counterfeiting its member's news articles by using small part of them in order to prepare a news collation marketed as NewsBrief and NewsExplorer.

The Belgium Court rejected the Copiepresse claim, confirming the EC opinion that the competent courts on the matter are the European Courts.

Copiepresse announced that they wouldn't appeal the decision, claiming "startegic reasons" and explaining that they just wanted to get the EC out in the open, since they didn't reply to any message on the topic. But at the same time the Association announced that they would continue the case in the Bruxelles civil court, where an action of cease&desist has already been introduced.

The European Commission representatives claimed in court that its services are just press reviews, that fall under the exemptions from the copyright law protection.

The judge initially ordered a judicial expertise in order to gather more technical information about how the site was built, but then he dismissed this evidence and took his decisions only on jurisdictional grounds.

Copiepresse sues the European Commission to the civil court (only in French, 27.06.2008)
http://www.actu24.be/article/regions/regionbruxelles/infosbxl/copiepre...

Belgian press beef with EU beaten in Belgian court (1.07.2008)
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/01/copiepresse-sla...

Belgian agency to sue European Commission again over news aggregator (2.07.2008)
http://www.out-law.com/page-9227

EDRi-gram: Belgium newspaper group continues its actions against search engines (25.10.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.20/belgium