Google settles suit by French news agency
Global news agency Agence France-Presse has settled its lawsuit against Google Inc. and will allow the Internet search leader to post news and photos from AFP journalists.
The deal, announced Friday, settles the copyright infringement lawsuit that Paris-based AFP filed in March 2005 accusing Google of posting news summaries, headlines and photos without permission.
Financial details of the settlement weren’t disclosed.
The deal will allow Mountain View, Calif.-based Google to use headlines and photos on Google News and other services that drive online traffic to sites displaying AFP news.
The companies declined to disclose where else AFP’s news would be used by Google.
Google settled a separate dispute with the Associated Press last August. At that time the two companies disclosed a new business relationship under which Google would pay the New York-based wire service for news and photos, but financial details of that arrangement weren’t disclosed.
Eric Scherer, AFP’s director for strategic planning and partnerships, said the French news agency was pleased because “the work of our journalists and photographers will be recognized in a normal way.”
“With the other major Internet players like AOL, Yahoo or MSN, we have been licensing our content to them for years and years,” he said.
Scherer said Google would make use of AFP news in novel ways, but he declined to provide details.
Google said in a statement that the deal would “enable the use of AFP’s newswire content in innovative, new ways that will dramatically improve the way users experience newswire content on the Internet.”
The company is still fighting copyright suits on other fronts. Copiepresse, a group representing French- and German-language newspapers, has sued Google for copyright infringement for including links to newspapers.
In February a Brussels court ruled that Google violated the newspapers’ copyrights and ordered the company to remove the links. Google is appealing that decision.
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The Associated Press and Bloomberg News were used in compiling this report.
