A Belgian group representing newspaper publishers in the European country has demanded that Google pays up the $77 million in damages awarded back in February 2007. At the time, the search engine leader lost a copyright lawsuit filed by Copiepresse which alleged that Google displayed and archived articles from several Belgian French- and German-language newspapers.

According to CopiePresse, Google violated several Belgian copyright laws by reproducing and publishing stories and reports and also by storing full archived stories. The summaries and links featured on Google were from CopiePresse’s Le Soir and La Libre Belgique.

Google says that it has not received yet the summons dated May 23 requesting damages and interest, which Copiepresse made available to several news agencies. Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker also said that the news aggregation performed by Google News is entirely legal and that it still awaits the outcome of its appeal on the 2007 ruling.

The two tried to negotiate an out-of-court agreement, but the time frame for the negotiations has expired and thus Copiepresse went ahead with the legal action. The Belgian group has settled out of court similar disputes with Microsoft.

In addition to its initial financial demand, the Belgian group wants a version of the ruling to be published on google.be and news.google.be for a period of 20 days or an additional daily payment of $1.6 million.