Agence France Presse is suing Google for linking to its news stories.

AFP is demanding Google remove all its headlines, intros and pictures from Google News and pay $17.5m in damages. While many companies spend good money trying to improve how often, and how high up, the Google rankings they appear the French news agency is taking a different tack.

The news agency claims Google is accessing its content without permission and that it has asked for it to be removed and Google has failed to stop breaching its copyright. The case was brought to the US District Court of Columbia late last week

The news agency said it asked Google to stop linking to its content but the search engine had not done so.

AFP sells stories and photos to newspapers and other news sources. Some of its content is available through its clunky website. ®

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