Google Fights Back With Copiepresse Appeal

Belgium becomes the focal point for a heated confrontation between Google, and the news management organization that beat it in court.

Google doesn’t lose in court very often, but they took what for them equated to a humbling beating from Copiepresse last year. Copiepresse won a judgment against Google for indexing news content from websites it represents.

That decision included forcing Google to post the judgment for five days on its Belgian portal. The company did so, in a small font size, and their subsequent posts on their official blog made it clear they weren’t happy about this.

Google and Copiepresse subsequently reached a partial settlement of their differences. But a complete resolution will have to wait for an appeals process to take place.

A Bloomberg report about the case found from Google that an appeal had been filed ten days ago. This won’t interrupt their ongoing negotiations with Copiepresse, however.

Google believes its use of small excerpts of news content in Google News complies with copyright laws. A Belgian court disagreed, finding “no exception” in their laws for this, the report said.