Wavety.com

Google Inc has come under fire from a Paris court as it ruled against the search engine giant in a case of copyright infringement slapped on the company by French publisher La Martiniere, which fought the case on behalf of several other French publishers.

Google Inc was found guilty by the Paris court of violating French copyright laws by digitising books and featuring excerpts from the books in search results without prior permission from the publishers or individual writers.

The Associated Press has reported that the court has ordered Google to cough up 300,000 Euros in damages along with a daily payment of 10,000 Euros until it gets rid of the literary excerpts of the publishers’ book from its database.

However, Google has said that it will appeal against the judgment of the court, as Google spokeswoman Gabriel Stricker said in an email sent to Information Week that the company “disagree[s] with the judge’s decision and will appeal the judgment.”

Stricker added that Google “believe[s] that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S.”

Ever since Google initiated its plans to digitise books around the world from local libraries and other sources to feature scanned excerpts of the books in its search results, it has been running into legal hurdles from publishers all over US and Europe.

originally posted on ITProPortal