France Slaps Google on Wrist With Small Fine in Google Books Suit

From DailyTech: Google, the world's largest internet firm, has long rolled out groundbreaking services – after these rollouts, it then then worried about sorting out the resulting legal implications in the aftermath. This was the case with Google Books. After Google began scanning and posting excerpts of thousands of books online for free viewing, publishers threw a fit, complaining that Google was infringing on their property.

After a U.S. lawsuit, Google was able to broker a deal with American publishers to keep the most of the material online. That deal has been renegotiated due to objections from U.S. Justice Department. Prosecutors who were urged by Microsoft and Amazon to forbid the deal on antitrust grounds.

Worldwide, Google still faces other suits over the controversial service, though. In France, Google just lost a major case regarding the service. Google was found guilty of infringement on Friday in Paris court and ordered to hand French publisher La Martiniere 300,000 euros, or roughly $430,000 in damages. The company was also instructed to take down all the publisher's work or face additional fines of 10,000 euros, or $14,340, per day.

Google plans to appeal and spokeswoman Gabriel Stricker wrote in an email, "We disagree with the judge's decision and will appeal the judgement. 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."

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