A Paris court issued a ruling banning Google from scanning French-published books because they were in violation of the country’s copyright laws. It said that Google’s expansion into digital books is a breach of France’s copyright laws. In addition to this, the court fined the Internet search leader with €10,000 per day until it stops showing literary previews, especially of books published on French soil. This hefty fine is equivalent to almost $14,300 a day.

Aside from this, Google was also fined an additional €300,000 in damages and interest payable to French publisher La Martiniere, which brought the case to the Paris courts in behalf of a group of publishers from France.

Google, for their part, said they would appeal the ruling. This decision in France is another obstacle to the goal Google has set out to achieve before 2015: to scan all of the world’s books into a digital library that can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. A US legal settlement that can grant Google the digital rights to millions of books is in jeopardy because US regulators have foreseen and warned a federal judge in New York that the act can ruin competition in the growing market for electronic books. According to them, the agreement may also compromise copyrights.

The courts of France, and also that of Germany, have raised objection to this granting of digital rights to Google saying that this will overstep and violate copyrights of publishers in other countries. Google is trying to appeal its case amidst the clamor of its critics. The revised settlement submitted by the company is still under court review.

The French court ruling served as a big obstacle for Google and its ambition of getting into other markets beyond Internet search. Many critics speculate that Google is getting too powerful for the market’s good and that it will soon be eating up its competition and completely dominate the whole Internet market. Despite this, Google’s shares still gained $3.86, up to $597.80, in last December 18’s trading.