Google Belgian Copyright Appeal May Decide Search Engines' Fate in Europe

Google is fighting a Belgian ruling blocking it from publishing links to local newspapers on its online news service at a hearing that could decide the fate of search engines and referencing services in Europe.

Google is appealing a 2007 Belgian court ruling that its news search breached copyright laws, forcing it to remove links and snippets of articles from French- and German-language newspapers. The judge in that case “seemed to have badly understood” the functioning of Internet search services, Google’s lawyers said. “This case will have serious consequences to the way information is searched and managed” on the Internet, Eric Valgaeren, one of the lawyers representing Google, told the Brussels Court of Appeal. “A negative ruling would put at risk all referencing services or even cause them to disappear.” The court should “put an end to the hypocritical position” of the claimants and the “astronomical sums” they’re seeking, Valgaeren, who works in the Brussels office of law firm Stibbe, said at the hearing.