Google, La Martiniere End Legal Dispute on Scanning That Started in 2006
Google Inc. (GOOG), owner of the world’s largest search engine, settled a legal dispute with French publisher La Martiniere Groupe and agreed on terms allowing it to scan out-of-print works that are still copyright-protected.
The deal will permit La Martiniere to sell books on Google’s Ebooks platform and split revenue from those sales between the two companies, Mountain View, California-based Google said today in a statement.
The agreement “allows us to move forward in a constructive way for the benefit of French writers and readers,” Philippe Colombet, director of Google Books in France, said in the statement.
Google is working to improve its relationship with French industry groups and regulators after disputes over privacy and access to copyrighted content. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt promised to increase Google’s investment in France after meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy last year.
“France is a country which has required special attention,” Colombet said today on a conference call about the agreement. He declined to detail the financial terms of the deal, saying just that “a majority” of revenue would go to the rights holder as has been the case in similar accords.
Ruling in 2009
Today’s agreement resolves a dispute that Paris-based La Martiniere initiated in 2006. Google was ordered by a civil court in the city in 2009 to pay the French publisher’s Editions du Seuil unit 300,000 euros ($433,000) and stop scanning French works for its digital library project.
Since that ruling, Google has reached agreements with other groups in France such as the country’s main music-rights collection agency, SACEM, which arranged to compensate artists whose works appear on Google’s YouTube site, and the Hachette Livre unit of Lagardere SCA (MMB), the country’s biggest publisher.
The settlement announced today doesn’t affect Google’s appeal of the 2009 ruling that pertained to the Syndicat National de l’Edition publishing trade group, which had joined La Martiniere’s case, or to a lawsuit brought in May by three publishing houses that claimed Google scanned almost 10,000 copyright-protected works without permission, Colombet said.
Google is working to end the SNE dispute and to reach similar accords with other French publishers, Colombet said. The May lawsuit “disrupted discussions underway,” he said.
Spokeswomen at the publishers weren’t immediately available to comment when contacted by phone.
A U.S. judge gave more time last month to Google and a group of publishers and authors to negotiate a settlement of a lawsuit over the search-engine company’s digital reproduction of books. That dispute dates back to 2005.
To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Smith in Paris at hsmith26@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net
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