Posted on 03/20/2005 6:01:17 AM PST by wingblade
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Agence France-Presse has sued Google Inc. for copyright infringement, alleging that the Internet search engine included AFP headlines, news summaries and photographs published without permission.
In a suit filed in a Washington court, AFP sought damages and interest of at least 17.5 million dollars (13.1 million euros) and an interdiction on the publication of its text and photos without prior agreement.
In Paris, the AFP management declined comment.
AFP, which has its headquarters in Paris and bureaus around the world, is one of the major global news agencies, and supplies its news services to various kinds of media, including electronic. It has 600 online clients.
Shades of Freerepublic and the Washington Post. It will be interesting to see how it's resolved and if Freerepublic can benefit.
Benefit? Except for the tiny photos, the supposed infringement news.google.com engages in is arguably less than FreeRepublic's exerpts. So I can only see a down side here. Then, I am a pessimist type.
I'm not sure why they are going after news.google.com's use of their headlines and the first few words of their stories, when over at www.google.com and groups.google.com you can often find cache residing on google hard drives and containing the entire text of a news story.
Sounds absurd. Unlike FR, Google's mission is clearly to drive readers to the sources they index, and no one reads just their “headlines, news summaries and photographs[thumbnails]” as published competitive content.
Unsold French grapes are turning sourer.
The Associated Press considers its pictures, headlines and stories printed on various web pages as the biggest new source of income in decades. Its not surprising AFP would do the same.
Has Agence France-Presse really thought this one through? Do they really want to be filtered out of every American internet search engine for just $13 million dollars? Looks like French CEO's are of the same quality as their military counterparts. Memo to self: never hire French accountant.
AFP wants money.
"Attorney Randolph P. Quidnunc, lawyer for AFP, advised that his client will protect to the limit its rights, and will print thousands of articles in excerpted form online every day just to annoy Google".
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