Belgian newspapers seek up to €49 million from Google in damages

Copiepresse is suing Google for copyright infringement in part because it believes that Google's copying of pages breaks the law. Google's search engine offers links to the websites it indexes but also to 'cached' copies of those pages. The copies are stored on Google's own servers. It is also suing because it believes that Google News's republishing of headlines and story snippets infringes copyright.

The Court of First Instance in Belgium ruled in February last year that Google had to stop republishing parts of Copiepresse members' material, and said that the company would be fined €25,000 a day for any continuing infringement. Google said it would appeal.

Copiepresse asked Professor Alain Berenboom of the Free University of Brussels to assess how much material was stored and reproduced by Google without its members' permission, and what its members' losses from that activity was.

Berenboom found that the losses attributable to that activity were between €32.8 million and €49.2 million for a single year, and that it would be for the Court to decide which figure to choose as the damages to be paid to Copiepresse members.

"It must be noted that these assessments have been made for one single year only and do not target, as far as 'Google Search' is concerned, the entire period not covered by statutory limitation (ie. 5 years)," said a Copiepresse statement to the Court.

Google had asked to be exempted from copyright law under fair use principles, but the Court denied the company that right in February.

Google said that the figure for damages had no basis.

"We strongly believe that Google News and Google web search are legal, and that we have not violated Copiepresse's copyright," said a spokesperson. "This is why we are appealing the February 2007 ruling. We consider that this new claim for past damages is groundless and we intend to vigorously challenge it."

Copiepresse said in its Court-submitted document that Google may well want to challenge Berenboom's figures, and that a panel of Belgian legal experts should be called on if it did want to challenge the figures.