The copyright defense organization Copiepresse is seeking $77 million in damages for violating copyright laws, on behalf of the newspapers.

The suit continues an ongoing battle between Google and Copiepresse. In February 2007, the Belgian court reaffirmed a previous decision that Google could not include or repurpose the Belgian newspapers' content for its own use.

At the time, Google, Mountain View, Calif., said it intended to appeal the court's decision. In a post on Google's corporate blog from Feb. 13, 2007, Rachel Whetstone, European Director of Communications and Public Affairs, wrote, "This judgment is clearly disappointing, and we intend to appeal it because we believe that Google.be [the Belgian Web site] and Google News are entirely legal and provide great value and critical information to Internet users. However, we are very pleased that the judge agreed Google should be given notice of articles and other material that content owners want removed. As we have in the past, we will honor all requests to remove such materials."

Whetstone also wrote: "It is important to remember that both Google Web Search and Google News only ever show a few snippets of text. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the Web publisher's site where the information resides."

The two sides reportedly had tried to negotiate an agreement, but Google resumed referencing the Belgian articles after the newspapers changed their tagging system, according to Reuters.