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Dec 18, 2009

Google sued for scanning



Google had sought to challenge the court's jurisdiction in the case but the judges ruled in the end that the matter was within their purview. -- PHOTO: AFP

PARIS - A FRENCH court on Friday told Google that it cannot digitise French books without the publisher's approval and ordered the online giant to pay 300,000 euros (603,000 dollars) in damages. The case was brought in 2006 by one of France's biggest publishing houses, Le Seuil, which claimed that up to 4,000 of its works have been digitised by Google without consent. A Paris tribunal ruled that by scanning entire books or excerpts that are put on line, 'Google has committed acts of copyright violation to the detriment of Le Seuil' and two other publishers. It ordered Google to pay 300,000 euros in damages to the three publishers owned by La Martiniere group and a symbolic sum of one euro to the SNE Publishers' Association and the SGDL Society of Authors. La Martiniere was seeking 15 million euros in damages and interests. The publishing group backed by the 530-member SNE and the the authors' guild was contesting Google's decision in 2005 to digitise millions of books from US and European libraries and make them available on line. The court gave Google one month to apply the ruling and halt all digitisation of French books or face a 10,000 euros per day fine. The plaintiffs lawyer, Yann Colin, told the court that Google's decision to digitise the books was 'illegal, dangerous and caused prejudice to the publishers' who were powerless to oppose the agreement with libraries. Google had sought to challenge the court's jurisdiction in the case but the judges ruled in the end that the matter was within their purview. Digitisation has become bound up with the sensitive issue of protecting French cultural and intellectual property in recent months. President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Monday that his government will spend 750 million euros to digitally scan its national treasures, vowing to protect its heritage at a time of suspicions over the American-owned Google's digitisation drive. -- AFP