Google’s failure is complete. This morning, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld the decision by French Competition Authority to force Mountain View to negotiate in good faith a fair compensation for publishers and press agencies’ neighboring rights. The Court also gave arguments that will enable the press to obtain data from Google about its use of press publications. The French press seized the Competition Authority in December 2019 for abuse of a dominant position, following Google’s refusal to negotiate a fair remuneration for their neighboring right, in September 2019. This approach was validated this morning by the Paris Court of Appeal. The decision of the Competition Authority of April 2020 – which was adopted on the basis of the request from the press – is also validated on all points. This is the signal, after a year of procrastination, that Google will have to – finally – negotiate, and that the neighboring rights set up by the copyright directive, transposed by French law 2019-775 of 24 July 2019, cannot be dismissed. Not a walk in the park Isabelle de Silva, president of the Competition Authority (ADC), has taken real risks with this decision to force Google to negotiate. It is indeed a temporary measure – a tool rarely used by the ADC – and, moreover, in the new field of neighboring rights. Stakeholders were indeed worried following the…
