IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT NEWS: French competition body fines Google €250 for copyright violations, (Mar 22, 2024)

By Cheryl Beise, J.D.

Fines include unauthorized use of news publishers’ works used to train Google’s Bard (now, Gemini) AI tool.

The Autorité de la concurrence has fined Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google Ireland Ltd and Google France (collectively, “Google”) €250 million for failing to comply with prior commitments the company made in 2022 to settle copyright violations. This is the fourth decision the Autorité has issued against Google in four years, according to a March 20 news release.

France adopted a law on 24 July 2019 transposing into French law Article 15 of EU Directive 2019/790 of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights, to encourage fair negotiations between press agencies, publishers, and digital platforms.

The Autorité ordered Google to comply with interim injunctive measures in April 2020 (Decision 20-MC-01 of 9 April 2020). Two years later, the Autorité found that Google had not complied with these injunctions and imposed a fine of €500 million, as well as ordering Google to comply (Decision 21-D-17 of 12 July 2021). Ruling on the merits of the case in 2022, (Decision 22-D-13 of 21 June 2022), the Autorité accepted, for a period of five years, renewable once, the commitments proposed by Google to put an end to the competition concerns expressed. Accuracy was appointed as a trustee to monitor and oversee the implementation of Google’s commitments.

In the present decision (Decision 24-D-03 20 March 2024), the Autorité has fined Google for breaching its commitment to cooperate with the monitoring trustee and failing to comply with four of its seven commitments. Google failed to:

• negotiate in good faith, based on transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria, within three months (Commitments 1 and 4);

• provide press agencies and publishers with the information needed to transparently assess their remuneration for related rights (Commitment 2);

• take the necessary measures to ensure that negotiations do not affect other economic relationships between Google and press agencies and publishers (Commitment 6).

With regard to “Bard,” the Autorité found in particular that Bard had used content from press agencies and publishers to train its foundation model, without notifying either them or the Autorité.

Google did not contest the facts and chose to accept the fine.

Companies: Alphabet Inc.; Google LLC; Google Ireland Ltd.; Google France

News: AINews Copyright TechnologyInternet