A French appeals court upheld an order for Google to open negotiations with French publishers over payments to use their news content.
The Paris Court of Appeal sided with France's competition authority, which had ordered the US tech company to discuss compensation with publishers and news agencies for reusing their material online.
French regulators had argued that Google must sit down for talks under a “neighboring rights” law adopted after the European Union overhauled the bloc's copyright rules, which include allowing news companies to demand payments when search engines display snippets of their stories.
Google had balked and threatened last