Google has been handed a 10,000 euro-a-day (£8.87m) fine by a French court, which the firm must pay until it stops previewing online books.

The judge in Paris ruled that the internet search leader had breached France's copyright laws by expanding into digital books, and ordered it to pay the equivalent of £8,850 a day until the content is removed.

Damages and interest of 300,000 euro (£266,000) were also paid to firm La Martiniere, which represented a group of French publishers.

Google attorney Alexandra Neri said the company would appeal.

The decision erects another legal barrier that may prevent Google from realising its five-year-old goal of scanning all the world's books into a digital library accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

The top US copyright official and the governments in Germany and France also raised objections about the settlement overstepping its bounds. Google is trying to address the critics with a revised settlement that is still under court review.

The internet giant has been depicted as a copyright breaker that prospers off the content of others - a portrayal the company's management insists is totally off base.

Philippe Colombet, the head of Google's book-scanning project in France, declined to answer questions about whether Google would remove the books from its database or pay the fine. "We are going to study the judgment carefully over the coming days," he said.

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