Legal News

?The Justice Department is Clearly Focused on Google?

By Ashby Jones

Here’s a thought: Maybe the FTC and DOJ should go set up little antitrust satellite offices in Mountain View. It would at least make data collection easier.

The latest in what appears to be a growing battle between government trustbusters and Google, the DOJ has sent formal demands to the company and publishers for information about a deal that would allow Google to make millions of books available online. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the NYT’s; click here for a video interview with the WSJ’s Elizabeth Williamson on the topic.

The demands are the strongest sign yet that the Justice Department may seek to block or force a renegotiation of the settlement, which was struck last year and has not yet been approved in court.

Google began scanning books in 2004 so the text could be searched online, and publishers and authors sued to stop the effort in 2005, alleging it violated copyright laws. Google settled the dispute last year, agreeing to pay $125 million to settle claims, cover legal fees and establish a registry for publishers or authors to get paid when their titles are used online. Earlier this year, however, Justice officials began looking into whether the agreement violated antitrust laws.

The criticism of the settlement is this: that it will give Google broad copyright immunity and make it difficult for competitors to enter the market for digital titles.

A New York publishing executive said the Justice Department is requesting documents about pricing, digital strategy and conversations with other publishers related to the Google settlement. “The Justice Department is clearly focused on Google,” said this executive.

The executive was speaking about the copyright issue, but could have been speaking more generally. Last year, Google’s proposal to form a search partnership with rival Yahoo Inc. was blocked by Bush antitrust regulators.

The department is also looking into whether technology firms, including Google, have agreed not to poach each other’s executives. Google has confirmed it has been approached by the department on both issues but has declined to go into further detail. Click here for an earlier LB post on that.

How does Google CEO Eric Schmidt feel about all the ramped up scrutiny? “From my perspective, at our scale and with the impact we have, we expect to be inspected,” he said. “We expect it in every government. I am not saying we love it or we hate it.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 10, 2009 (boomark / email).