Belgian newspaper group Copiepresse – yes, the one that’s in that legal wrangle with Google – is about to re-enter a copyright battle with a second online publisher – this time it’s the European Commission.
Copiepresse will attempt to sue the EC for a second time after it had its copyright infringement case against the EC’s news aggregation services NewsBrief and NewsExplorer thrown out by a Belgian court.
The group took the case on the same grounds as its Google case, that the use of the material without newspapers’ permission was an infringement of their copyright.
According to Out-Law.com, Belgian press reports said the case was thrown out of the Court of Seizures in Belgium after a report produced for the court backed the Commission and because there was a jurisdictional problem with the case. Iy added that the group would not appeal against the throwing out of the case but would re-submit it to Belgium’s civil court.
Tags: Copiepresse, European Commission, googleThe European Commission has approved the acquisition of Reuters by Thomson - subject to certain conditions being fulfilled.
The Commission was concerned that range of information services - rather than the news side of the respective businesses - supplied by the companies would be reduced and that the creation of a sole provider of analytical market information would be detrimental to customers.
The companies therefore agreed to a range of measures to limit this impact.
“The merging parties have offered a remedies package that provides strong safeguards that users of financial data will not be harmed by this major consolidation,” Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner, said in a statement.
The Commission originally raised concern that markets for the distribution of certain reports and financial data would be ill served by the merger as it may reduce choice, encourage the ‘likelihood of price increases’ and a ‘severe risk of discontinuation of overlapping products.’
The statement from the Commission stated: “To remove the Commission’s competition concerns, the parties committed to divest the databases containing the content sets of such financial information products, together with relevant assets, personnel and customer base as appropriate to allow purchasers of the databases and assets to quickly establish themselves as a credible competitive force in the marketplace in competition with the merged entity, re-establishing the pre-merger rivalry in the respective fields.
“Therefore, customers of such financial information products would continue to have sufficient alternatives post-merger.”
The statement added that the US Department of Justice would propose a settlement agreement consistent with the remedies accepted by the Commission.
Tags: European Commission, financial information products, information services, Neelie Kroes, reuters, Thomson, US Department of JusticeA victory in a European court last year against Google has encouraged newspapers in Belgium to take action against the European Commission over links on two agency sites.
According to the Times, a Brussels court has been asked by a group of French- and German-language newspapers to examine its claim.
Tags: Belgium, Brussels, Brussels court, encouraged newspapers, European Commission, European court, European Union, google, The Times
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