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Google Books' Fair Use Win
Rejecting a decade-long attack on Google's mass reproduction of millions of books as well as its presentation of “snippets” ' sections of works set alongside information on how readers can buy the books ' the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit court decided that Google Books has a “highly convincing transformative purpose” and thus is a protected fair use for which the company cannot be held liable under the Copyright Act.
Circuit Court Pierre Leval, Jose Cabranes and Barrington Parker made the decision in The Authors Guild v. Google Books, 13-4829 (Second Cir., Oct. 16, 2015). The appeals court upheld a 2013 grant of summary judgment in Google's favor by then-Southern District Judge Denny Chin, who found fair use in a decision that ruled in favor of the company's 2004 Library Project, in which libraries and the company collaborated on the mass digitization of library books. Since the project's inception, libraries have downloaded more than 2.7 million digital copies of their own books.
Judge Chin found significant public benefits for the Google Books project, which now has more than 20 million books, including the transformation of “expressive text into a comprehensive word index that helps readers, scholars, researchers, and others find books.” Judge Chin said the project helped preserve books, gave underserved populations access to books, and aided scholars to analyze large amounts of data through the use of “text mining” and “data mining.”
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