Field v. Google

Field v. Google, Inc., is a case where Google Inc. successfully defended a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Field argued that Google infringed his exclusive right to reproduce his copyrighted works when it "cached" his website and made a copy of it available on its search engine. Google raised multiple defenses: fair use, implied license, estoppel, and Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor protection. The court granted Google's motion for summary judgment and denied Field's motion for summary judgment.

The plaintiff, Blake Field, is an attorney, author, and member of the State Bar of Nevada. On April 6, 2004, Field filed a complaint against Google asserting a single claim for copyright infringement due to Google's alleged copying and distributing one of his works (Good Tea) that he had previously published on his personal website, www.blakeswriting.com. On May 25, 2004, Field filed an Amended Complaint, stating that Google had infringed on an additional 50 works published by Field on his personal website.

Field sought $2,550,000 in statutory damages ($50,000 for each of the 51 registered copyrighted works) in conjunction with injunctive relief.

The defendant, Google, operates a popular search engine. To enable users to search billions of websites, Google uses an automated program called the "Googlebot." This program crawls the internet looking for new sites to include in its index. Once a site is found the Googlebot creates a "cached" version of the site. The cached version is then included in the search results of its search engine. When a user clicks the link to the cached version, the user can view a "snapshot" of the page as it appeared at the time the Googlebot found the site.

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