The group of publishers previously said they were demanding as much as 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) from Google-owner Alphabet in copyright fees for their news snippets and other items published by the U.S. company on the Web.
The German case underlines the battle waged by publishers seeking a share of revenues earned from the distribution of news on Alphabet services such as Google News and YouTube.
The European Union toughened its copyright rules in April, forcing Google to pay publishers for news snippets and Facebook to filter out protected content. The bloc’s 28 members must implement those regulations in the next two years.
The German case arose after VG Media, a consortium of about 200 publishers, took Google to a German court for using text excerpts, images and videos produced by its members without paying them.
The lawsuit was based on a German ancillary copyright law in force since August 2013.
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