Authors Guild v. Google
| Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Court | United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit |
| Full case name | The Authors Guild Inc., et al. v. Google, Inc. |
| Decided | October 16, 2015 (2d Circuit); November 14, 2013 (SDNY) |
| Court membership | |
| Judge(s) sitting | Denny Chin (SDNY); Pierre N. Leval, José A. Cabranes, Barrington Daniels Parker, Jr. (2d Cir.) |
| Keywords | |
| copyright infringement, fair use | |
Authors Guild v. Google is a copyright case litigated in the United States. It centers on the allegations by the Authors Guild, and previously by the Association of American Publishers, that Google infringed their copyrights in developing its Google Book Search database.
In late 2013, U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin (sitting by designation) dismissed the lawsuit, and affirmed that the Google Books program meets all legal requirements for "fair use," in what Publishers Weekly called a "ringing endorsement" of Google. The Authors Guild appealed the ruling to the Second Circuit, in New York, which held oral arguments in late 2014. On October 16, 2015, the Second Circuit "rejected infringement claims from the Authors Guild and several individual writers, and found that the project provides a public service without violating intellectual property law." The Authors Guild petitioned the US Supreme Court, which in April 2016 declined to review the case, leaving the lower court's decision standing.
The publishing industry and writers' groups have criticized the project's inclusion of snippets of copyrighted works as infringement. Despite Google taking measures to provide full text of only works in public domain, and providing only a searchable summary online for books still under copyright protection, publishers maintain that Google has no right to copy full text of books with copyrights and save them, in large amounts, into its own database.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia has argued that the project poses a danger for the doctrine of fair use, because the fair use claims are arguably so excessive that it may cause judicial limitation of that right.
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Wikipedia