The French Publishers Association and several publishers are likely to file a lawsuit against Google during the Paris Book Fair later this month for digitising hundreds of French books without permission, president Serge Eyrolles has told IWR sister title The Bookseller .

France would be the first European country to take action against Google, following in the footsteps of the Association of American Publishers ( click here for more), which filed a lawsuit against Google in October to seek an injunction against the Print for Libraries project.

The French titles that Google is scanning--the most recent of which were published in the 1970s--come from Michigan University under an agreement with the search engine. The university has 500,000 French language titles.

Google has yet to respond to the French Publishers Association's (Syndicat National de l'Edition) demand to withdraw the titles. It has offered an opt-out arrangement, but this is unacceptable to the SNE, which accuses the company of infringing copyright law, Eyrolles said.

The 10 publishers involved include STM specialist Flammarion, humanities publisher Gallimard and fiction publishers Calmann-Levy, Fayard, Hachette, Grasset and La Martinière.

A representative of Google, yet to be named, will participate in a round table discussion about digital libraries on the first day of the Paris Book Fair, which runs from 17th to 22nd March. Also on the platform will be a representative of the Open Content Alliance consortium, and French National Library president Jean-Noël Jeanneney. The guest of honour at the fair will be the French language.