Copyright Suit Targets Google News
Internet search and content giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) , known as one of the top aggregators of news and other information online, has been sued by Agence France Press (AFP) for allegedly publishing copyrighted content without permission.
The French media publisher -- which is seeking more than US$17 million in damages and an injunction barring Google from further publishing its news stories and photos -- took its action in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in March of 2005.
The suit follows Google's defeat in French court in February of 2005 over trademark infringement allegations from fashion designer Louis Vuitton, despite Google's victory in a similar trademark infringement case involving the insurance company: Geico.
This case is somewhat different in that AFP is suing Google for theft and distribution of copyrighted content and materails. The Google News site aggregates and indexes the headlines and first few lines of news stories from more than 4,000 sites. Users who click on the headlines are then sent to the site of the original publisher.
The opt-out feature was cited by Google in response to the AFP suit. AFP went on to argue that Google had been informed of the alleged infringement, yet ignored requests to avoid the publication of AFP's copyrighted content. A similar suit, which is ongoing in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, was brought against Google by pornography publisher Perfect 10 last year.
American Internet publishing and copyright cases in recent years have largely depended for precedent on the Total News case of more than five years ago, in which the courts held that permission to publish is required if companies present content online inside their own window or under their own logo.
Is google stealing copyrighted content with its news headlines at the top of the keyword search results pages ? It could be years before the judges and governing legal bodies are ablt to issue precedent setting rulings on these matters. One question is what is preventing any newspaper, magezing, ezine, or any publication from republishing another party's content and re-labeling the distrbution channel with another ownership logo?
Do traditional publishing laws and established truth in advertising trademark policies apply to the internet?
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