Press related rights: new agreement signed by Google to remunerate the French press
On April 9, 2020[1], the French Competition Authority (Autorité de la Concurrence) required Google to negotiate under its supervision with publishers and news agencies « a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory compensation to index in Google their protected content », it’s no down.
After the creation of a neighboring right for the benefit of news agencies and press publishers on July[2] 26, Google signed a new framework agreement on January 21 with the Alliance of General Information Press in France (APIG), bringing together nearly 300 titles of « political and general information press » to establish the remuneration of the French press by the U.S. company thanks to « neighboring right ».
Google had already announced in November 2020 that it had reached individual agreements with a number of press publishers to take into account the copyright of online publications indexed in the search engine.
This new agreement, signed on January 21, « sets the framework within which Google will negotiate individual licensing agreements with APIG members ». These licensing agreements will « cover related rights, and will also give newspapers access to News Showcase, » Google’s future media product. Press publishers will then be able to display their premium content directly in Google News.
According to the Alliance of the General Information Press, the remuneration of publishers will be calculated individually and « based on criteria such as, the contribution to political and general information, the daily volume of publications or the monthly Internet audience ».
This framework agreement does not, however, cover all the French written press, because the Agence France Presse or the « Syndicat des éditeurs de la presse magazine » (SEPM) are not concerned.
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By the IP/IT team of the UGGC Law Firm
Source: APIG Press Release
[1] Décision 20-MC-01 du 09 avril 2020
[2] Loi n° 2019-775 du 24 juillet 2019 tendant à créer un droit voisin au profit des agences de presse et des éditeurs de presse