Google is being sued for $17.5m by Agence France Presse (AFP) for posting copyrighted articles and photos, allegedly without paying royalties.

The French news agency has brought the case in response to the Google News search page, which lists stories from media around the world.

In a suit filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, AFP asked for Google to stop linking to its subscription-only content from the free search page.

AFP claimed that it had approached Google repeatedly about the problem and was forced to take the case to court when it got no response.

A similar case against Google is currently ongoing, brought by pornography distributor Perfect 10. This lawsuit claims that Google is displaying Perfect 10's adult images on its search engine result pages, allowing people to view them without paying.

"Under the guise of a search engine Google has copied almost every image that exists, including all adult images," said a Perfect 10 spokesman.

"We believe this is not an accident. We think Google has copied these because sex sells and the more traffic it generates the more money it makes."

Both cases will highlight a 2002 ruling which stipulated that websites could show thumbnail versions of copyrighted photographs but not the full-sized images.