Google faces new book-scanning lawsuit

April 1, 2010 - 11:14AM

French publishers will launch a second lawsuit against internet giant Google for digitally scanning their books for its vast online library, one of them said on Wednesday.

"We are taking our turn at going into battle (against Google), along with some of our fellow publishers," Antoine Gallimard, the chief executive of major French publisher Gallimard, told AFP at Paris's annual book fair.

He said that three other big French publishers Albin Michel, Flammarion and Eyrolles would join the action.

Google "has been making us promises for months... and yet continues with its illegal digitisation," without the publishers' consent and in breach of their copyright, Gallimard said.

Google France declined to comment to AFP on the case on Wednesday.

A French court in December ruled that Google had breached the copyright of three publishers owned by the La Martiniere group by scanning entire books or excerpts and putting them online.

It ordered Google to pay 300,000 euros ($442,000) in damages to the publishers and to stop digitising French books without publishers' approval. Google has appealed the decision.

Opponents of Google's scanning activities have also brought a challenge in a US court against its book-scanning agreement with US authors and publishers.

In France, digitisation has become bound up with the sensitive issue of protecting French cultural and intellectual property in recent months.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced a major government plan to scan the country's national treasures and vowed to protect French heritage at a time of suspicions over Google's digitisation drive.

Google said this month that it had reached agreement with the Italian culture ministry to scan up to a million books housed in the national libraries of Rome and Florence.

AFP

Source: smh.com.au