Well, it looks like Google has ruffled some French feathers, where three major publishers filed a lawsuit against the company on May 6 for alleged trademark violations by its Google Book Search, according to an article by Beecher Tuttle on TechZone 360. This suit follows a December suit filed against Google by French publisher Éditions de La Martinière.
In fact Google has been facing complaints by La Martinière since 2006, when it filed a suit, with the help of France's National Publishers' Union, "to stop Google's scanning operation, claiming that even though the vast majority of the scanning is done in the United States, the law being broken is French," according to Law.com.
The 2006 lawsuit ended in a decision in 2009 against Google, requiring Google to pay EUR 300,000 "in fines for damages and an injunction forcing it to remove La Martinière books from its extracts service, forbading it from continuing to digitise books without rights-holders' authorization and requiring it to publish a copy of the decision on its website," according to a report on TelecomPaper.com. Google is reportedly contending the decision.
The three publishers in the new suit are "demanding 9.8 billion euros in damages ($14 billion), and Google has been issued a summons, a source in Gallimard's legal department told AFP," in a story reported by AFP, the French press agency.
Nearly 10,000 books have been scanned without authorization, according to various reports.
"The damages are for 'a fixed tariff of 1,000 euros per scanned book to which the publishers own the rights,' said the legal representative who asked not to be named," the AFP reported.
"That number does not include titles that were scanned since the lawsuit was filed nor those owned by the publishers' subsidiaries, according to TheBookSeller.com," reported Tuttle on TechZone 360.
Google continues to stand by its "not guilty" plea.
"'We were surprised to receive this new claim. ... We remain convinced of the legality of Google Books and its compliance with French laws and international copyright,' [Google] said in a statement," the AFP story noted.
"We are committed to continue working with publishers to help them develop their digital offering and to make their works accessible to Internet users in France and abroad."
At the end of 2011, Google managed to negotiate at least one major deal successfully, with Hachette Livre—France's largest publisher—which "licensed Google to scan out-of-print books for which it holds the rights," reported the AFP.
The U.S. Google Book Settlement
In the United States, Google's outlook had been more promising until March, when a U.S. District court rejected Google's 2008 settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, on behalf of a number of U.S. publishers and authors.
According to an article on The Economic Times, "US Circuit Judge Denny Chin said the creation of a universal library would benefit many but would 'simply go too far.' He said the settlement of the class-action lawsuit challenging the right of Google to scan books and display snippets for online searching would 'grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners.'''
An article on msnbc.com reported, "The deal gives Google 'a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case,' Chin said. He noted that many of the concerns raised in objections to the settlement would go away if it were converted to an 'opt-in' settlement from an 'opt-out' settlement."
For more information and updates on the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement, visit the settlement administration website.
- Companies:
- Association of American Publishers
- Places:
- France
- United States