The largest French news service lodged a lawsuit against Google for having included headlines, pictures and other elements of its stories in its Google News aggregation service. Google's policy has been to allow sites to opt out of the Google News collection, but Agence France Presse (AFP) is a wire service whose stories get republished by countless other sites, most of which are eager to have Google News include them it its listings. The key legal issue may revolve around the explicit and implicit permission given to Google by these third party sites. AFP is seeking $17.5 million in alleged damages and an injunction from including its stories in the service. Interestingly, the French service is suing Google in a U.S. court. French courts have proved to be almost consistently unfavorable to Google, sometimes contradicting precedents in courts elsewhere. Another interesting point about the new lawsuit is the prospect that the AFP suit may go beyond just Google News and also involve demands that the material not appear in Google's search engine, challenging the legal propriety of the search engine model itself.