Search giant Google has been battling the Authors Guild and writers about whether its book-scanning project, which includes millions of digitized publications, is legal or was an infringement of copyright laws. A Court of Appeals ruled on October 16, Friday that its search function and text snippets did not violate any intellectual property rules and regulations due to the small amount of viewable text.
The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals made the ruling. It involves Google's searchable database that includes millions of books that it digitized after securing agreements with various libraries. Several of the books are non-fiction and many are out of print.
Here is how it works. After users conduct a Google Books search, the results show which books contain the phrase, and the number of times it appears.
In addition, up to three image "snippets" are shown, containing about 1/8 of a book's page. Google Books uses various methods to prevent users from seeing large chunks of a book. It also blacklists 10 percent of the publication from the Web, according to Gizmodo.
The Authors Guild and some writers whose books showed up in the database without their legal permission sued the California tech company for copyright infringement. Like the district court, the circuit court also sided with Google.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the search function itself and the snippet function were fair to use. It noted four factors that are included in U.S. federal laws.
In particular, the court ruled that the search result was totally different from the page and book it was pulled from. The information was founded on the book itself, not the info in it.
Meanwhile, the Google Books' snippet function added value to the search function. It explains the context by which a book uses a particular term, which could encourage the user to buy the entire publication.
The court's ruling is the latest drama in a decade-long legal battle, according to 9To5Google. In the original 2005 lawsuit the Authors Guild claimed that the tech company had broken copyright laws by permitting readers to view a maximum of 20 pages of copyrighted books. Google won the battle two years ago.