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Google could face further court woe following Belgian ruling

14/02/07 - A court in Belgium has ruled that Google's news service breaches copyright and this could lead to further rulings against the search engine in Europe. The court ruled that Google News was breaking copyright law by showing excerpts of Belgian news articles.
On 13 February 2007 a Belgian court ordered Google to stop showing excerpts of articles from French and German-language Belgian newspapers on Google News and Google's web search site for Belgium. This re-establishes an earlier ruling by the same court but it did reduce the daily fine Google faces if it fails to follow the ruling, to £16,640 from £665,000.

The search engine has already had experience with the case when the court ruled against it in September 2005. Late in 2006 Google settled with Belgian journalists and photographers, but not with the organisation that represents the newspaper publishers Copiepresse.

While the case was pending Google complied with the ruling but spokesman, Ricardo Reyes, said that they would be challenging it. "Google is disappointed and we intend to appeal the ruling because we believe that Google.be and Google News are entirely legal and provide great value and critical information to internet users," he said.

Lee Bromberg, a copyright and trademark attorney for Bromberg & Sunstein believes that other European news organisations may follow suit and bring cases against Google. "Google has a very aggressive approach toward copyright law… There is a good chance that other European countries will think that the ruling made sense," he said.

However Chris Ruhland, a litigation and intellectual-property lawyer for LA based Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe believes media organisations that remove themselves from Google and Google News searches will be doing themselves more harm than good. "They won a legal victory for now but maybe not in the long term. In 2007, if you are not findable in Google, you might as well not exist for practical purposes."

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<a href="http://www.pulsewebhosting.com/news/google-could-face-further-court-woe-following-belgian-ruling/33/" title="Google could face further court woe following Belgian ruling">Google could face further court woe following Belgian ruling</a> Published Date: 2007-02-14 13:42:31

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