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Visual artists sue Google over book scanning project

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Several visual artist organizations filed a class action suit Wednesday against Google alleging copyright infringement resulting from the company's book scanning project. The plaintiffs include the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), the Graphic Artists Guild, the Picture Archive Council of America, the North American Nature Photography Association, Professional Photographers of America, as well as individual photographers and illustrators. The visual artists' class action is being brought in the US District for the Southern District of New York, the same court where an earlier class action was brought against Google by text authors. According to lawyers for the plaintiffs, ASMP and the other visual artists decided to bring a separate suit when they were prevented from joining the earlier action. Last month, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) urged a federal court to reject the proposed class action settlement in the copyright suit between text authors and Google due to copyright and antitrust concerns. In February, a federal judge heard arguments on the proposed settlement but did not indicate when a ruling can be expected. The case originated when two lawsuits were brought against Google by the Authors Guild, a group seeking to preserve copyright protection for authors, and by other plaintiffs including the Association of American Publishers (AAP), McGraw-Hill, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster. Under the terms of the original settlement agreement, which was reached in October 2008, Google would pay $125 million to authors and publishers of copyrighted works. In return, Google would be allowed to display online up to 20 percent of the total pages of a copyrighted book, and would offer users an opportunity to purchase the remainder of any viewed book.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on April 07, 2010 (boomark / email).