Google Loses in French Copyright Case

A French court ruled on Friday that Google infringed copyrights by digitizing books and putting extracts online without authorization, dealing a setback to its embattled book project.
The court in Paris ruled against Google after a publishing group, La Martinière, backed by publishers and authors, argued that the industry was being exploited by Google’s Book Search program, which was started in 2005.

The court ordered Google to pay over 300,000 euros, or $430,000, in damages and interest and to stop digital reproduction of the material. The company was also ordered to pay 10,000 euros a day in fines until it removed extracts of some French books from its online database.

Google said it believed that it had complied with French copyright law and that it planned to appeal the decision.

“We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. — and improves access to books,” said Philippe Colombet, who is responsible for Google’s books partnership in France.

Mr. Colombet said he did not know whether the company would immediately remove the excerpts or pay the fine; Google’s lawyers were still examining the ruling. He also said there would be no impact on Google’s settlement with publishers and authors in the United States, an agreement that would allow the company the right to digitize, catalog and sell millions of books online that are under copyright protection.

La Martinière, based in Paris, first filed the suit in 2006 claiming damages against its publishing houses: Editions du Seuil of France, Delachaux & Niestlé of Switzerland and Harry N. Abrams of the United States.

Those publishers, supported by the French Publishers’ Association and an authors’ group, had argued that scanning books was an act of reproduction that Google should pay for. They had demanded that Google be fined millions of euros.

They accused Google of letting users browse the content without paying for it, and of reaping revenue from advertisers but not adequately compensating the creators and original publishers of the works.

Yann Colin, a lawyer for La Martinière, expressed his satisfaction with the result and said his client hoped that the level of the fine would be increased.

The court, he said, had been “a bit rapid” in its assessment of damages, given that the three publishing houses claim that about 10,000 of their works were infringed.

Google has so far scanned 10 million books through partnerships with libraries in its project to put the world’s literature online. Over half of the books are in languages other than English.

Those include books under copyright, of which only extracts can be previewed free. In these cases, Google directs users to sites where they can buy books or libraries where they can borrow them. Other books are in the public domain and can be read and downloaded free.

The project has proved especially controversial in France. Here, politicians including President Nicolas Sarkozy have pushed for a broader public digitization program, apparently wary of offering Google the chance to capitalize on the country’s cultural heritage.

Mr. Sarkozy pledged nearly 750 million euros earlier this month toward the computer scanning of French literary works, audiovisual archives and historical documents, an announcement that underscored his government’s desire to maintain control over France’s cultural heritage in an era of digitization.

The settlement in the United States outlined a plan to create a database of in-print and out-of-print works. It includes measures to find and compensate authors but covers only books published in North America, Britain and Australia, and any books registered with the United States Copyright Office.