Big Win For Authors Guild In Google Case

Book2Book - 1 June, 2012

The battle is officially on. On May 31, Judge Denny Chin rejected Google's motion to dismiss the Authors Guild as an associational plaintiff, and granted the Guild's motion for class certification, meaning that Google's library scanning program, barring another settlement, is headed to trial on the merits.

   

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And from PublishersLunch:

Judge Certifies Class In Google Case Yet Again

Unsurprisingly, Judge Denny Chin agreed with his own ruling from 2005 and once again agreed to certification of the class of authors in the refiled Google Books infringement case--thus sentencing himself to potentially years more of administering this case. He also approved associational plaintiff status for both the Authors Guild and the American Society of Media Photographers.

One shouldn't read much into the ruling other than that the case will go forward all over again. In part, Chin used Google's own actions against them: "Given the sweeping and undiscriminating nature of Google's unauthorized copying, it would be unjust torequire that each affected association member litigate his claim individually. When Google copied works, it did not conduct an inquiry into the copyright ownership of each work; nor did it conduct an individualized evaluation as to whether posting 'snippets' of a particular work would constitute 'fair use.' It copied and made search results available en masse. Google cannot now turn the tables and ask the Court to require each copyright holder to come forward individually and assert rights in a separate action. Because Google treated the copyright holders as a group, the copyright holders should be able to litigate on a group basis."
Ruling