Last month a district court in Hamburg ruled in favor of two men who claim search engines that pull pictures from their Web sites infringe on their copyrights.

"We are really disappointed about the ruling," said Kay Oberbeck, a spokesman for Google in Germany. "We believe Google Image Search is entirely legal."

Oberbeck said other European courts have supported Google's right to display thumbnail images from other Web sites as search results.

Google and the other search engine operators named in the ruling — Deutsche Telekom, Freenet.de and AOL Germany — can continue to run image searches in Germany while the appeals are pending. Freenet.de also planned to appeal.

No date has been set for the Hamburg appeals court to hear the cases.