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.

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.

(Photo: deVos, some rights reserved)

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