A federal judge in Manhattan recently granted class-action status to authors suing Internet search services provider Google, US, over the company’s book-scanning project. The judge, allowing the long-stalled case to move forward, ruled that three individual authors and the Author's Guild could represent the class of all authors whose works had been scanned by Google.
Google had sought the opposite result, arguing that including all authors in a single lawsuit would make the case too complex. According to the company, most authors actually supported the scanning project.
Judge Denny Chin ruled on two distinct legal issues. The first was over whether the Author's Guild was entitled to serve as a representative of its members. Google had argued that only individual authors could be plaintiffs as the case would require the participation of those individual plaintiffs to consider issues such as fair use.
But Judge Chin reportedly rejected Google's argument. The associations' claims of copyright infringement and requests for injunctive relief would not require the participation of each individual association member, he stated.
Chin also gave the go-ahead for three individual plaintiffs - Betty Miles, Joseph Goulden and Jim Bouton - to represent the vastly larger class of persons residing in the US who hold a US copyright interest in one or more books reproduced by Google as part of its Library Project.
The ruling is seen as an important victory for the authors because it would have been financially difficult for the three authors to carry the lawsuit forward on an individual basis. This ruling means that plaintiffs' lawyers will be more interested in taking the case in expectation of hefty damages if the authors win. The plaintiffs will also be able to rely on the resources of the Author's Guild to cover their legal costs.
