IT and Copyright: French publishers reach an agreement with Google

French publisher La Martiniere has allowed Google to scan out-of-print works which are still copyright-protected. La Martiniere, in its turn, is permitted to sell books on Google Ebooks platform.

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. According to the deal, revenue from sales will be split between the two companies

Google faced a problem associated with book digitization in France in summer 2006. It was then that La Martiniere ordered the American corporation to pay compensation amounting to 100 000 euro for each of 100 books, as claimed by the French party, Google had put on the Internet illegally. Google insisted on its innocence explaining that the books were outdated and their authors had passed away long ago.

The trial between the company and French right holders was renewed in 2009. The charges of copyright infringement against Google were brought by SGDL society, association of publishers SNE and the publishing house Seuil, owned by La Martiniere. The court decided that Google was infringing authors’ rights of publishers, however later Google managed to lodge an appeal.

In March 2010 Google succeeded in reaching an agreement with the government of Italy regarding digitization of almost one million books from libraries of Rome and Florence, which were published prior to 1868. The Ministry of Cultural Heritage mentioned that the agreement would help to save the books from damage and loss. Among digitized works were those by Dante, Machiavelli and Galileo. Investments in the project totaled 100 million euro.

Earlier Google had concluded similar deals with a number of American universities, as well as libraries of the USA and Germany.