Fresh from winning a European court case forcing Google (NSDQ: GOOG) News to stop exercpting their articles, Belgian news publishers have lost their similar case against the European Commission itself - but they will press on. Their Copiepresse umbrella body had the criminal case thrown out of a Belgian court, but will submit a civil case instead, Out-Law reports. At issue are the EC’s NewsBrief and NewsExplorer online news aggregators.

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Copiepresse had brought the case on similar grounds to those with which it won against Google last year (for which it is now seeking €49 million damages), but one report produced for the court advised the EU aggregators were perfectly legitimate whilst another said a Belgian court was not the proper forum for such a case.

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