Authors Win Certification in Google Book Scan Class Action Lawsuit

A federal judge has granted class certification to authors who claim Google failed to get permission before copying and digitizing works still under copyright, finding a class action lawsuit to be “more efficient and effective than requiring thousands of authors to sue individually.”

 

U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin also rejected Google’s request to toss from the case the Authors Guild, which sought class certification for thousands of authors, claiming that Google was “engaging in massive copyright infringement.” Google has already scanned more than 20 million books for its Google Books project.

 

Last year, Chin rejected a $125 million class action settlement between the two sides and the parties have been unable to reach a new agreement. 

 

In May, Google asked Judge Chin to dismiss the class action lawsuit on the basis that the Authors Guild should not be able to represent the owners of the books’ copyrights because the organization doesn’t own the copyrights at issue.

 

Judge Chin rejected Google’s request to dismiss the Google book scan class action lawsuit, saying copyright holders will not have to prove their ownership individually because copyright information is available publicly. What’s more, Google does not dispute that its copied millions of original works without the copyright holders’ permission, he wrote.

 

Chin said forcing authors to sue individually would be “burdensome and inefficient.”

 

“Furthermore, given the sweeping and undiscriminating nature of Google’s unauthorized copying, it would be unjust to require that each affected association member litigate his claim individually,” Chin wrote. “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.”

 

Judge Chin certified the proposed class, which is likely to include thousands of authors.