Google has also signed deals to pay more than 300 publishers in Germany, France and four other EU countries for their news and will roll out a tool to make it easier for others to sign up too, according to a Reuters report.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has already ordered an investigation against the search giant for abusing its position among news publishers after the Indian Newspaper Society and Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) alleged abuse of dominance. The association believes that more than 50% of the total traffic on the news websites is routed through Google and that the search giant, with its algorithms, determines which news website gets discovered via search.
The Canadian order of April 5 follows one that was earlier pronounced in Australia and experts said these initiatives in other countries too like France and Spain will encourage Indian law makers and CCI to implement fair play.
“The Canadian legislation could have implications here in India as it could be used by Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) in the Competition Commission of India in support of their case case filed against Google,” Salman Waris, partner head of TMT (telecom, media and technology) and IP practice at TechLegis told ET.
NL Rajah, advocate at the Madras High Court agreed and said that if there is a precedent set abroad, he doesn’t see how India can be far behind. Rajah said that the legality will have to be examined within the framework but that with other countries taking a hard stance, there will be demands from organisations to bodies like the CCI to take a closer look at how these companies operate in India.
“Cross border IP protection is going to become a norm in the future,” he said. “Eventually we will have to fall in line with global trends. How quickly or how late it will happen depends on the process of integration of cross border IP protection regime.”
Cross-border IP protection facilitation tools promote a balance between national sovereignty-based policy provisions and non-discrimination against foreign applicants.
In an interview to ET last year, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that content producers and publishers need to be remunerated by online platforms which use their content.
