Google Inc lost a copyright lawsuit on Tuesday to Belgian newspapers that had demanded it remove headlines and links to news stories posted without their permission. The ruling, if confirmed, could set a precedent for how Web search engines link to copyrighted material in the tumultuous arena of online news.
The company behind the world's most-used search engine immediately said it would appeal, claiming its Google News service was "entirely legal" and the Belgian decision was a one-time result that would not be repeated elsewhere.
The Brussels Court of First Instance ruled that California-based Google could not call on exemptions, such as claiming "fair use" because it says it reviews press articles when it displays headlines, a few lines of text, photos and links to the original page.
"Google is reproducing and publishing works protected by copyright," it said. "Google cannot call on any exceptions set out by law relating to copyright or similar rights."
It decided in favor of Copiepresse, a copyright protection group representing 17 mostly French-language newspapers that complained the search engine's "cached" links offered free access to archived articles that the papers usually sell.
Copiepresse said the ruling was based on EU law and could trigger similar cases against Google in other nations, mentioning talks with copyright groups in Norway, Austria and Italy.
But Google said the judgment -- which confirms an initial ruling in September -- would not necessarily carry influence in other areas.
"This ruling does not mean that everywhere else or every other judge in any other country would rule in the same, even in Belgium," said Yoram Elkaim, legal counsel for Google News. "There are conflicting rulings on those issues which are fairly new and complicated."
US-based technology lawyer Jonathan Band said the ruling was neither final -- as it can be appealed to higher courts in Belgium -- nor did it bear much weight since legal precedent is not as important in Continental European law.
"I'm sure other newspaper publishers are probably going to read the decision carefully but the most important factor is that it's not the ultimate ruling," he said.
In the US, Internet search engines have been able to call on "fair use" to defend the republication of text excerpts, and a similar system exists in British law.
"On the Continent, they don't have that," he said.
Google said the court still had not settled the debate on what the ruling covered, claiming it only applied to Google News Belgium and google.be.
"In our view we have complied with the ruling fully since September," Elkaim said.
If the court agrees, Google would not have to pay retroactive daily fines of 25,000 euros (US$32,470) for each day Google did not comply -- far lower than an earlier judgment that threatened 1 million euros a day.
But Copiepresse lawyer Bernard Magrez claimed Google was still not complying fully with the ruling -- saying that it covered google.com and other versions -- meaning fines could run up to around 3.3 million euros.
Copiepresse is still negotiating similar copyright issues with Yahoo and MSN.
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