Appeals court rules in favor of Google online library

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Google is not violating copyright laws by digitizing millions of books so it can provide small portions of them to the public, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a decadelong dispute by authors worried that the project would spoil the market for their work.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan agreed with a judge who concluded that the snippets Google showed customers from its database was a transformative use of the information and thus did not violate copyright laws.

Judge Denny Chin ruled in November 2013 that Google’s digitization of more than 20 million books, mostly out-of-print titles, did not violate copyrights because the Mountain View, Calif.-based company showed only short sections of the books in its database. Chin had said it would be difficult for anyone to read any of the works in their entirety by repeatedly entering different search requests.

In an opinion written by Judge Pierre N. Leval, the appeals court agreed, saying the snippet feature “substantially protects against its serving as an effectively competing substitute for plaintiffs’ books.”

The three-judge appeals panel did acknowledge, though, that some book sales likely would be lost if someone were merely searching for a portion of text to ascertain a fact.

The Authors Guild and various authors had challenged Google in 2005, contending that the digital book project violated their rights.