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Around fifty press titles have taken the digital giant to court, accusing it of evading the compensation required for the use of journalistic content.
New assault by the French press against a Tech giant. Around fifty titles, mainly regional, grouped together in the Alliance for the General Information Press (APIG) announced on Friday that they had initiated infringement actions against Microsoft before the Paris Court. Furthermore, a specific procedure is reportedly in preparation against the professional network LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft since 2016.
These press titles are demanding several tens of millions of euros from the digital giant, according to information from Les Echos. They accuse Microsoft of not complying with the 2019 law on neighboring rightswhich requires it to pay financial compensation to the media whose content it uses in its various tools. Particularly targeted are search engine Bing, the Microsoft Start home page as well as the MSN web portal.
Refusal to transmit data
“Despite repeated requests from publishers for several years, Microsoft and LinkedIn continue to evade their obligation to transmit data,” specifies the APIG in a press release. “This transmission is, however, essential to the opening of a negotiation in good faith and the establishment of fair remuneration for the use of press content,” believes the media alliance.
At the same time, several press titles announced that they were taking separate actions: Ouest-France is also attacking Microsoft, while Le Groupe du Figaro is already attacking LinkedIn. “Le Figaro has always preferred to negotiate rather than trigger legal proceedings,” comments its general director, Marc Feuillé, “but given LinkedIn’s refusal to open discussions, it is forced to resort to justice.”
