Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular Internet-search engine, lost two copyright lawsuits in Germany over displaying photos and artworks as thumbnails in a preview of search results.

Google's preview of a picture by German photographer Michael Bernhard violates his copyrights, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled, his lawyer Matthies van Eendenburg said in an interview today. Thomas Horn, who holds the copyrights on some comics that were displayed in Google search results, won a second case, court spokeswoman Sabine Westphalen said in an e-mail.

``It doesn't matter that thumbnails are much smaller than original pictures and are displayed in a lower resolution,'' the court said in its ruling for Bernhard. ``By using photos in thumbnails, no new work is created,'' that may have justified displaying them without permission.