Jun 3, 2012

Copyright Debates: French Court vs. Google

One of the leading French television networks, TF1 sued YouTube and parent company Google for intellectual property abuse. Though French court acquitted YouTube of all charges, motivating the decision by the fact that Google is not responsible for controlling YouTube content. Back in 2008 TF1 wanted Dailymotion and YouTube pay 141 million euros for violation of copyright, but the court ordered the company to cover Google’s legal fees to the sum of 800.000 dollars.

YouTube is still obliged to delete the content that abuses copyright at the owner’s instance. The attained verdict concerning Dailymotion must be paid in September.

Google’s relationship with French judicial system used to be problematic. Google paid 660.000 dollars to Bottin Cartographs this February. Then it was fined to the sum of 100.000 euros for taking information from unsecured wi-fi networks for Google Maps project. In 2005 Google was accused of trademark counterfeiting by the travel companies Viaticum and Luteciel. In 2010 AdWords received a complaint from French authorities who made Google compromise and allow some of the advertisers to buy sponsored links.

This April a court in U.S. obliged Google to pay Viacom 1 million dollars. Google’s representative said this case was nothing, but a little dispute that could not affect YouTube functioning.

Google considers itself to be a media outlet, like a magazine and that is why they are guaranteed to have the freedom of speech. It seems like Google gets ready for possible future attacks that might surely arise.