November 13, 2006

A new lawsuit was launched against Google over copyright infringement violations involving videos after Google acquired YouTube.

Google said it now faces additional litigation over its acquisition of the video download service, after it filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Nov. 8.

"Some entities have also filed copyright claims against Google, alleging that features of certain of the company's products, including Google Web Search, Google News, Google Video, Google Image Search and Google Book Search, all infringed on certain people's rights" Google said.

The company added "in addition, our planned acquisition of YouTube may also subject us to additional copyright claims upon the closing of the transaction". "Adverse results in these lawsuits may include awards of damages and may also result in, or even compel, a change in our business practices, which could result in a loss of revenue for Google or otherwise harm its business," Google's SEC filing said.

Lawsuits against Web search, News and Book Search have been reported previously, but not Google Video litigation.

Google representatives didn't return an email seeking additional comments on the lawsuit.

In October, Google announced it was acquiring popular video sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

To appease media companies who realize that their copyrighted material have been posted on YouTube, the popular video sharing service has removed some copyrighted video content and has made new deals with other media companies since.

At the same time, YouTube has been sued itself by a company with the Internet address "Utube.com" over certain confusion caused by the similar domain names.

Source: C-Net News