Google France has reached a framework agreement with press association APIG (Alliance de la Presse d'Information Generale), which represents around 300 political and general information press titles in the country. This follows the ruling from the French competition authority in April 2020, under which the company started remuneration talks for the re-use of protected contents on its news and search pages. Google had originally been accused of disregarding new legislation on neighbouring rights, introduced to transpose the latest EU copyright directive into French law.
Welcoming the agreement, APIG said that Google has now effectively recognised neighbouring rights of digital platforms, opening the way to their remuneration under new licensing terms. APIG members will also be able to sign up to Google’s News Showcase licensing programme, which counts French titles Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Liberation among nearly 450 publications already participating across a dozen countries.
Under the new framework agreement, Google will now negotiate individual licensing deals with APIG’s members. The level of remuneration will be based on criteria such as the publisher’s contribution to political and general information, monthly internet traffic, and volume of publications.
