Legal News

Google Spars Over Book Settlement, Hears The (Lawsuit) Buzz

By Amir Efrati

Google Inc.’s legal department and outside counsel got a full workout today.

In federal court in lower Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin — of Madoff fame — heard arguments over a proposed settlement between Google and book publishers and authors to allow the Internet search giant create a massive digital library.

According to Law Blog colleague Chad Bray of DJN, who attended the so-called fairness hearing, the Justice Department and Google competitors including Microsoft and Amazon.com urged Chin to reject the settlement. The U.S. and Google competitors argued that if the pact is approved the company would gain an unfair monopoly over a large number of unclaimed published works and that it would violate copyright law. Other stories about the hearing are here, here and here.

Separately, a class action complaint filed in San Jose federal court alleges that Google broke the law when its controversial Google Buzz social-networking service shared personal data without the consent of users. Here’s the story from the SF Chron

The Buzz feature allows users to share information, photos and links with other people. Privacy groups said that when the service was switched on, users were automatically enrolled in it. As a result, a user’s Google email contacts could automatically see all of the user’s other contacts, as well as their photos and personal information.

The lawsuit, which Google declined to comment on, accuses the company of breaking various electronic communications laws and is seeking unspecified monetary relief.

At the Manhattan court hearing, Daralyn J. Durie, a San Francisco-based lawyer for Google argued Thursday that the settlement would give copyright holders of out-of-print books a means to distribute their works that doesn’t currently exist and a way to continue to be compensated for those works.

Judge Chin didn’t immediately rule. “There is a lot to think about,” he said.

In November, Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers submitted an agreement that would allow Google to distribute millions of digital copies of books online and pay $125 million to create a book rights registry, among other things.

On Thursday, William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said the pact is too broad. DOJ has an ongoing antitrust investigation into the settlement.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 18, 2010 (boomark / email).