Google fights fines for not posting Belgian ruling
Search giant refuses to post a copy of a Belgian legal ruling against it on its local Web site.
The world's most popular Web search engine also lodged a request on Wednesday to overturn the decision that forbade it from reproducing snippets of Belgium's French and German language newspapers on its news amalgamation service.
"We can confirm that we have lodged an opposition (to the ruling)," said Caroline Coesemans, an attorney for Stibbe, a Brussels-based law firm representing the U.S. Internet giant.
She said the court hearings are expected to start toward the end of November.
The lawyer added that Google was seeking to cancel or at least suspend a provision of the ruling that stipulates it must publish the September 5 decision on its Belgian Web site, or pay a daily fine of 500,000 euros ($633,800).
Google has so far not published the ruling.
"We argued that posting the link on the home page in Belgium is unnecessary given how much publicity this court case and the judge's decision have received," Google spokeswoman Rachel Whetstone said.
The ruling on the provision is expected to be issued on Friday, Coesemans said.
The company has removed all the relevant newspaper clips from its Belgian Google News site as required by the decision. It also removed them from its global versions voluntarily, Whetstone said.
The complaint against Google was filed by Copiepresse, an organization that manages copyright for Belgian newspapers.
Google News lists headlines and a few sentences of text from news articles around the world and links back to a publication's own Web site for users to read the whole item. Google has said that any publisher that wants to opt out of the service can do so by asking.
The company is facing a similar copyright lawsuit from French news agency Agence France-Presse.