Google's news aggregation service, Google News, infringes newspaper copyright by providing links and article excerpts on a single page according to the Belgian Court of Appeals.
The ruling upholds a 2007 lower court decision which requires Google to remove all links belonging to Belgian newspapers from its news aggregator.
Belgian newspaper industry group Copiepresse, which filed the suit on behalf of newspapers in 2006, said the excerpts were a source of income for the search engine and that publishers should be paid compensation. Copiepresse has a second suit pending in which it seeks as much as €49.1 million for the period in which Belgian newspaper content was available on Google News.
Google says it will look to collaborate with publishers in finding "new ways for them to make money from online news".
"We believe Google News to be fully compliant with copyright law and we'll review the decision to decide our next course of action," Google said in a statment. "We believe that referencing information with short headlines and direct links to the source - as it is practiced by search engines, Google News and just about everyone on the web - is not only legal but also encourages web users to read newspapers online."
In a statement Copiepresse said it is pleased with the decision and "hopes Google will have the intelligence to look for a fair solution to end this situation".
News aggregation, a service provided by many internet search engines, is controversial because it allows users to view links and excerpts of several newspapers on one page, without having to visit that newspapers website. Some publishers have contended that this diverts advertising revenue away from them, which is then pocketed by the search engines.
Google has the option to appeal the ruling to the Cour de Cassation, Belgium's highest court.
Source:ipworld.com
