By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google was hit with a lawsuit on Thursday by Danish online job-search rival Jobindex, a year after the latter complained to EU antitrust regulators that the U.S. tech giant unfairly favoured its own job-search service.
The Danish Media Association on behalf of Jobindex sued Google at a Danish court alleging copyright violations.
Jobindex has accused Google of copying job ads to its own service without permission and wants compensation and damages for copyright violations.
This is the first lawsuit in the Danish courts under new EU copyright rules regarding platforms’ liability for content uploaded to their services that came into force in 2021.
“We’re willing to compete with Google, but it must be on equal terms, not with Google for Jobs having products on its shelves that aren’t theirs,” Jobindex Chief Executive Kaare Danielsen said in a statement.
Danish Media Association CEO Mads Brandstrup urged Danish authorities to implement the copyright rules against Big Tech.
Jobindex has not used Google’s tools for flagging copyright infringing content, a Google spokesperson said.
“The Jobs function in Google Search was created to make job search as simple as possible, making it easier for people to find relevant job results more quickly and increasing traffic and job matches for participating job providers,” she said.
“Any job provider – big or small – can take part. No one is included in the Jobs function in Search unless they want to be – and we respect any decision not to participate in these features.”
The EU antitrust watchdog has yet to act on Jobindex’s complaint.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Richard Chang)
