Last week, we reported about the Fourth Amendment Class Action Against Google Complaint filed on the 14th of October Yet, this was not the first event in a long ongoing litigation process.

The litigation began on September 20, 2005, with the Authors Guild, together with Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles and Daniel Hoffman, filed a class action lawsuit against Google for its Book Search project. The Authors Guild complained that Google was committing copyright infringement by scanning books that were still covered by copyright. Google countered that the use of the scanned books fell under the definition of fair use according to US copyright law.

In February 2008, a settlement with financial compensation for the aggrieved parties was proposed.

Two opposing lines of arguments were presented by the opposing sides.

Google argued that it would make millions of books available to poor and disadvantaged communities, therefore furthering equal opportunities in school. It also plans to adapt all the scanned books to the visually disabled, which would give them access to 12 million books instead of the 1 million currently available. They also argued that their book scanning would be invaluable in preserving access to out of print books.

The Authors Guild party arguments against the settlement were divided between foreign tights holders who felt inadequately protected, and who deplored the lack of translation of the settlement in foreign languages, representatives of public interest organization arguing that the necessary monitoring or readers required to implement the settlement would infringe on the readers’ privacy, Amazon, Yahoo and Microsoft and other Google competitors arguing that Google had turned copyright laws upside down by scanning the book first and seeking permission after and the unfairness of the settlement cap on authors inserts.

On October 28, 2008 the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google announced that they had settled Authors Guild v. Google. Google agreed to a $125 million payout, $45 million of that to be paid to rights holders whose books were scanned without permission. Though the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement allows for legal protection for Google’s scanning project, neither parties changed their position about whether scanning books was fair use or copyright infringement. In addition to the financial side, the Google Book Search Settlement establishes a new regulatory organization, the Book Rights Registry, which will be responsible for allocating fees from Google to rights holders.

In September 2009, the US Department of Justice announced that it was pursuing an antitrust investigation into this settlement and, on September 20, recommended to a New York court that they reject the Google book deal.

Sources:

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/GBSFair.pdf

http://therumpus.net/2009/08/an-open-letter-concerning-the-authors-guild-vs-google-inc/