A group representing authors in a copyright case reportedly slammed Google in court last week, saying the company's book-scanning project had hurt millions of authors whose works had been digitised.
The Authors Guild is seeking class-certification status for its claims case in order to represent all copyright holders in the US whose books have been scanned by Google as part of its Library Project. About 20 million books have already been digitised by Google since the project started in 2004. The guild is seeking minimum statutory damages for the authors it wants to represent.
The case brought by the authors was filed in 2005 and is one of three separate lawsuits tied to Google's book-scanning programme. Groups representing publishers and photographers also claim that Google has infringed copyrights via the Library programme, in which digital copies of scanned public domain and in-copyright books from participating libraries are stored on Google servers and are searchable via its search engine. Google presents only snippets of in-copyright books, while public-domain books are fully accessible.
Google is asking the court to dismiss the authors' case, saying the group does not represent the copyrights owned by individual authors or publishers. The company maintains that it is not violating copyright law, and that its actions are protected by the fair use principle. The fair use principle allows for reproduction of limited copyrighted material without permission.
The authors filed a document requesting class-action certification in December 2011 after a proposed settlement between Google and the authors and publishers was rejected by the judge earlier that year.
The presiding judge, Denny Chin of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, noted that there was an overlap in the class-action and dismissal claims revolving around the ownership of works. He said he would make decisions on the motions at a later date, but gave no timetable.
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