BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) — A Belgian court ruled on Tuesday that Google may not reproduce extracts from a variety of Belgian newspapers, imperiling one of the web search leader’s most popular services if other courts follow suit.

Google has been put in a spot as it lost a copyright lawsuit to Belgian newspapers that had asked the company to remove headlines and links to articles posted on its news site without their permission. Consequently, Google must pay 25,000 euros (US $32,500) per day until it removes all Belgian news content, the Court of First Instance ruled today in Belgium.Bernard Magrez, a lawyer for Copiepresse who works for Eurothemis, said the daily fine imposed against Google today is retroactive for 139 days, to when the search engine was first asked to remove the content.

Google will have to pay an additional 1,000 euros a day to other copyright groups, including SAJ, which represents journalists, if it fails to remove their content from its sites, the court ruled. Copiepresse argues that versions of news articles stored on Google can be seen on its service even after the articles are no longer freely accessible on a newspaper’s Website.

Google claims that they will appeal as it feels they were completely in the right. On the other hand, the cout ruling thought otherwise, “Google is reproducing and publishing works protected by copyright,” it said. “Google cannot call on any exceptions set out by law relating to copyright or similar rights.”

Mark

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