A closer look at the Google Books Library Project decision

by | Nov 18, 2013 | News from around the Web

From The IPKat: A closer look at the Google Books Library Project decision “ As was promptly announced by the IPKat, last Thursday Judge Denny Chin of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [yep, the same one who rejected the proposed settlement agreement in 2011, holding that it was too unbalanced in favour of Google] issued his much-awaited ruling in the Google Books Library Project saga, which started back in 2005. It was then that the Authors’ Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) sued Google for copyright infringement over non-authorised scanning of quite a few books.  Just to avoid any confusion among readers, Google Books is the broader project that includes the Library Project and the Partner Program (formerly known as Google Print). What is sometimes known as the Google Books case just involves the Library Project. Judge Denny Chin Background Since 2004 Google has scanned more than 20 million books in their entirety [with approximately 93% of books being non-fiction, and the great majority of works being out-of-commerce], and delivered digital copies to participating libraries [the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and a number of university libraries can download a digital copy of each book scanned from their collections, but not copies from other libraries’ collections], created an electronic database of books, and made text available for online searching through the use of snippets [users can search the full text of all the books in the corpus, although it is not possible to view a complete copy of a snippet-view book]. Some libraries have agreed to allow Google to scan only public domain works, but others have also permitted the scanning of in-copyright content. Overall,...

Google Gets Total Victory Over Authors Guild: Book Scanning Is Fair Use

by | Nov 14, 2013 | News from around the Web

From Techdirt.: Google Gets Total Victory Over Authors Guild: Book Scanning Is Fair Use “This one has been a long time coming, but this morning, Judge Denny Chin (who actually has a long history of siding with copyright holders) found that Google’s book scanning project is fair use. This is a huge victory in a variety of ways. Five years ago, we thought that Google made a huge mistake in dropping its fair use fight here, in trying to work out a "settlement," which would have harmed fair use by suggesting these kinds of things needed to be licensed, while also setting up a near de facto monopoly on digitizing books. Thankfully, that settlement got rejected, and the fair use argument went back into the courts. Actually, Judge Chin first focused on whether or not this should be allowed as a class action, but in a somewhat surprising move, the appeals court basically ignored that issue entirely and told Judge Chin to answer the fair use question first. He’s now done so and it’s a fantastic victory for fair use. The ruling relies on last year’s ruling in the similar HathiTrust lawsuit, in which the Authors Guild sued a bunch of universities for banding together to scan books in their libraries. There, the court pointed out that this was clear fair use, and Chin finds the same here with Google. He runs through the well-known "four factors" test, noting that Google’s work "is highly transformative," comparing it to other cases, that have said Google’s image search efforts are similarly fair use. But he goes further, in noting how valuable...

BREAKING NEWS: Google Books Library Project is FAIR USE

by | Nov 14, 2013 | News from around the Web

From The IPKat: BREAKING NEWS: Google Books Library Project is FAIR USE “ It was just a bit more than a year ago that Google and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) concluded a settlement agreement (here) that put an end to copyright infringement proceedings first brought against Google in 2005 by five AAP member publishers (McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group USA, John Wiley & Sons, and Simon & Schuster) over its Google Books Library Project.  However, the settlement achieved with AAP did not affect the (still) ongoing litigation between the Authors Guild and Google. As reported by the IPKat, in late 2012 Google submitted a brief to the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in which it basically asked the Court to reject Judge Denny Chin’s ruling in May 2012 that let the Authors Guild sue Google on behalf of all authors whose books were scanned without permission.  In July last the Second Circuit delivered its decision, substantially agreeing with Google and holding Judge Chin’s class certification as "premature in the absence of a determination by the District Court [ie Judge Chin] of the merits of Google’s ‘fair use’ defense".  Hence, the Second Circuit decided to remand the cause to the District Court for consideration of the fair use issues. As reported by Reuters a few minutes ago, today Judge Chin accepted Google’s argument that that its scanning of more than 20 million books for an electronic database, and making "snippets" of text available for online searches, constituted fair use. "In my view, Google Books provide significant public benefits", said Judge Chin. Today’s ruling is BIG news for anyone interested in copyright. This Kat promises to read the decision as soon as possible and summarise the main points on this blog....

No One Owns The Number ’3.95%’ (We Think)–Banxcorp v. Costco (Forbes Cross-Post)

by | Nov 4, 2013 | News from around the Web

From Technology & Marketing Law Blog: No One Owns The Number ’3.95%’ (We Think)–Banxcorp v. Costco (Forbes Cross-Post) “Banxcorp v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 09-CV-1783 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 17, 2013). Who owns a single number, such as 3.95%? The question probably sounds crazy. Numbers are just facts, and the Supreme Court said in 1991 that facts aren’t copyrightable. So...