Gallic publishers hailed an historic victory over Google yesterday after a Paris court ruled that the internet giant had breached copyright by making hundreds of book extracts available online.
It was ordered to pay €300,000 (£266,000) in damages.
The judgment came in the latest clash between the French Establishment and the Californian search engine, which has been denounced in Paris as a danger to the nation’s culture.
With France taking the lead in a campaign against Google’s plan to become the world’s online library, President Sarkozy announced this week that he would spend €750 million scanning French literary and artistic treasures.
He hopes that they will form the backbone of a French-led rival to Google.
The court case was brought by Hervé de la Martinière, the French publisher, who said that Google had no right to digitise entire works without authorisation and to make extracts available on the internet.
Backed by the French Publishers’ Association, he had called for €15 million damages for the illegal scanning of 10,000 works, 80 per cent of which, he said, were covered by copyright.
But the court found against Google only over 300 works available online, saying that the group had “committed acts of breach of copyright, which are of harm to the publishers”.
The ruling said Google cannot “seriously argue — unless it is casting doubt on the reason for the Google Books search engine — that creating a digital file from a book is not an act of reproduction.
“Digitising constitutes a reproduction of a work that must, if it falls under copyright protection, be done with the approval of the author or the copyright holders.”
Judges ordered the company to pay a further €10,000 a day until it removes extracts of the books from its database.
Serge Eyrolles, chairman of the French Publishers’ Association, was jubilant. “This shows Google that they are not the kings of the world and they can’t do whatever they want,” he said.
French publishers wanted Google to digitise their books, he said, “but only if they stop playing around with us and start respecting intellectual property rights. Now I think we’re going to find a solution.”
Maître Alexandra Neri, Google’s lawyer, said the company would appeal.
She denied that the group had acted unlawfully, arguing that the short extracts available online were not covered by copyright.
“Google Books is not a library but a document research tool,” she said.
Although the publishers have joined the Gallic crusade against Google, their position is not the same as that of Mr Sarkozy. They want payment for works digitised by the search engine, while the President goes much farther and does not want Google to scan them at all.
“We are not going to be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is,” Mr Sarkozy said last week as he outlined his drive to prevent Google becoming the main online provider of French culture.
Frédéric Mitterrand, the French Culture Minister, voiced Gallic concerns in a meeting this month with David Drummond, the vice-chairman of Google.
Mr Mitterrand said French culture should not be allowed to “fall into private hands”.
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