Google Books vs La Martiniere (International Copyright)

Google believes that they have complied with French copyright law and plan on appealing the decision. However, in France, there is no equivelelnt to the “fair use” clause, as there is in US copyright law.

Philippe Colombet, responsible for Google’s books partnership in France said,

“We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. — and improves access to books,”

Google’s biggest issue with this French ruling is that they believe by offering just the short extracts online, they are in no way infringing on copyright laws and they do not take away from the profits of the publishers by offering these snippets online for free.

Ron Rotunda, a law professor at George Mason University has come to the defense of the Google Books summary saying,

“Book Search retrieves snippets from books while also serving an educational purpose – allowing scholars and readers in general to find more easily the wealth of published works. Google’s Book Search will narrow the educational divide by giving every child with Web acess the ability to search the collection of the greatest library online.”

However, this argument is difficult to make because of the stricter copyright laws in France and the lack of fair use clause.

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La Martiniere had argued that when Google scanned the books, it was an act of reproduction. And because they had not paid for the ability to reproduce the work, they had violated the rights of the publishers. The publishers also argued that Google gained ad revenue from those advertisements displayed on the site when they were included on the pages that also had the book summaries published by their company. They believe that Google benefited from this deal and that the authors and publishers deserved to be compensated.

La Martiniere originally asked that Google be forced to pay 15 million euros ($21.59 million).

Yann Colin, lawyer for La Martiniere told the court that Google’s decision to digitize the books was,“illegal, dangerous and caused prejudice to the publishers.”

Yann Colin went on to say, “this should serve as a real wake-up call for Google, and will no doubt give ideas to other countries who take copyright seriously.”

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The biggest message to take away from this is that there is no International Copyright law. In the United States, Google has been allowed to publish summaries without too much opposition because of the fair use clause that falls under research and scholarship. However, in France, where no such clause exists, Google must take different efforts in order to continue on it digitization project.