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Thursday, September 23, 2010

Mixed Result for Google Today in European Courts

by Thomas O'Toole

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It looks like Google won one, and lost one, in European courts today. Over at its European Public Policy Blog today, Google is publicizing a Spanish court's decision to dismiss copyright infringement claims brought by a television broadcaster against the YouTube video-sharing website. According to Google's account of the ruling, the court ruled that it was the copyright owner's responsibility to police for infringements and then to identify infringing material on the site; notification would create a legal duty for YouTube to take down the infringing materials.

Also today, Google had a legal setback in France where the Paris Court of First Instance ruled that a Google official had committed slander based on the results of queries to Google Suggest. The plaintiff -- a person previously convicted of corruption of a minor -- sued the Google Suggest director personally because the plaintiff's name was returned in response to queries on search terms such as rape, satan worshipper, and other things. The court ordered the Google official to immediately remove all these references from Google Suggest, upon penalty of 500 euros per instance he fails to do so.

BNA's Spain and France correspondents are gathering the details on these decisions. The Spanish decision looks like a nice win for online intermediaries. The French case, at first glance, seems similar to the trouble Google had in Italy last year, where company officials were found personally responsible for an unlawful video published in Italy its YouTube website.
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