The court upheld the newspapers' claim that Google's republishing of newspaper stories' headlines and lead paragraphs on its Google News website was a violation of the newspapers' copyright.

But Publius can reveal there may be a way out. A pilot project called the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), first reported in this section last year, plans to test a digital rights management system for that will tell search engine 'spiders' what content is available for different levels of access and use.

Participants include Independent News & Media, Reed Elsevier, Agence France-Presse, Macmillan, John Wiley & Sons and Media 24, under the auspices of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), the European Publishers Council and the International Publishers Association.

It is too early to say whether or not Google, which has managed to find accommodations on advertising sales with many leading US newspaper groups and the People's Republic of China, will do a deal once ACAP is closer to production.

IRISH TIMES CONFIRMS OUR GAZETTE GROUP STORY Now that the Irish Times has confessed to investing in the Liam Hayes and Michael McGovern founded Gazette Group, publishing three suburban weeklies from Lucan -- and we're not sure why they kept it quiet for so long -- can anybody work out why? We originally reported last June that the Irish Times was sniffing around the company, and on January 29 that the Irish Times had completed the sale. Our information was imperfect, however. The Irish Times will initially take a less than majority stake in the Gazette Group but has an option to buy the lot.

OK YOU LITTLE PIXIE F**KS Inventive Marketing has won the Euro1m TV, radio, press and online advertising account for IFG Mortgages after a four-way competition. One radio spot, 'Football Manager', features the voice of Risteard Cooper of Apres Match.

MEN IN BLACK We're not even going to bore you with our fan mail from last week's revelation of RTE's clumsy handling of the 9/11 conspiracy "documentary" Loose Change, other than to say that, yeah, we're pretty sure the Men In Black didn't use the flashy thing on the entire island of Manhattan including all direct eyewitnesses to the second plane's impact and the operators and viewers of the world's live news broadcasts of the day.

BADA BING HBO, producers of much of what is worth watching on American television, scared the living hell out of many TV executives around the world by sending them the Valentine last week that they would, in fact, launch an on-demand subscription service in the UK through Richard Branson's Virgin Media. This may prove bad news for traditional TV.

IFTA ROW Ryan Tubridy's monologue at the Irish Film & Television Awards, taking a cut at TV3 and Channel 6 by name, has apparently caused more than a little ill-feeling. Tubridy voodoo dolls were said to be in production in a Bangladeshi factory. However, it is thought that the station's launch this Wednesday of Ireland's "first" [shudder] extreme makeover show, 'Inside and Out', will serve as retaliation. Failing that there are plans to convince Aaron Sorkin to include a Tubridy lookalike in a future episode of new show, 'Studio 60'. Its subject, appropriately, is the surreal backstage world of TV production.

Paddy Chayevsky was unavailable for comment.