Where would one expect a company to sue in Europe’s highest court against an opponent as powerful as Google? You might imagine a mirrored building, a big city, revolving doors and elevators. But probably not a village with 2,000 inhabitants Budapestwhere dogs bark in the front gardens when someone comes by. The Like Company is located in a single-family home with a carport, along with 291 other companies that have their mail delivered here. Their name tags hang on the garden fence and the shutters are drawn on the windows.
In 2023, the Like Company employed two people and made a loss of the equivalent of 76,000 euros. This emerges from public register data. Googles Parent company reported $74 billion in profit for the same year. So much for the balance of power, actually a nice David versus Goliath story. But the managing director of Like Company explained via email that he did not want to comment and referred the matter to his lawyer.
This lawyer, let’s now turn to Luxembourg, appeared at the hearing on Tuesday last week in the largest hall of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Gyula Rátz, sole representative of Like Company, on the other hand, four lawyers appointed by Google. The hall is packed, full of people in suits and robes, judges, lawyers, lobbyists. The EU Commission and six member states have sent representatives, including the German federal government.
The hearing will be broadcast live in 24 languages: 24 translations of a case that could make history, but is also a little crazy. It’s about a pop singer who… Hungary wants to settle dolphins. About a lawyer who attacks the tech industry on behalf of a media company that hardly anyone knows. Above all, it’s about how much intellectual property is actually still worth.
The German Association of Journalists says the procedure is “of outstanding importance for the protection of journalism in Europe” because it ultimately decides whether you can still make money with texts in the future. Not just with journalism, but also with poems, novels, song lyrics.
What is at stake for the tech industry is whether services like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini should even exist. Or whether companies like Google in Europe can be forced Compensation to be paid to authors – or to only train their models with licensed material, which would probably make them dumber and much more expensive.
The dispute on which this is now to be decided began in October 2023. At that time, the Like Company filed a lawsuit with a Hungarian court. The company operates six news portals. According to the accusation, Google used their texts to train its AI Gemini, which was then called Bard. And now Gemini gives answers similar to these articles. The Hungarian judges should clarify whether Google is committing a criminal offense. Which is no easy task, because most of the laws on which judgments could be based are older than the technology in question now. In such cases you can ask the ECJ for help. He then decides how the law should be interpreted.