Berlin  - Germany's top culture official, who has fought the Google Books settlement, voiced satisfaction Wednesday that Berlin had filed a court challenge in New York to the book digitization project.

US search giant Google reached agreement this year with the US Authors Guild to offer internet scans of millions of out-of-print books, many of them so-called orphan works whose copyright owners are unfindable.

On Tuesday, lawyers engaged by Germany's Ministry of Justice filed an amicus-curiae brief in the New York court attacking the settlement, which is not yet final.

"This is a major cultural-policy signal that shows we are not willing to put up with decisions that contradict German and European copyright law," said Bernd Neumann, the junior minister for culture.

US intellectuals have broadly welcomed the return to public use of a century of books which only exist in a handful of libraries, but have asked the New York court to ensure the multi-lingual library is not a monopoly.

Fees are to be paid to all rights holders who can be found.

However many German book authors oppose the agreement root and branch, because of its wholesale changes to world copyrights.

Authors have signed a petition, the Heidelberg Declaration, demanding that Berlin fight Google to halt the digitization project.

Neumann, who is friends with many authors and has aligned with the Google opponents, said he was delighted the Justice Ministry had acted.

Google is estimated to have digitized between 10 million books, many of them in German, for its online library. Its key ally in Germany is the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Neumann's rejection has also been criticized by online groups in Germany.

The European Union last week cautiously welcomed Google's plans to put the hard-to-find books online but called for talks. dpa