Google has won an appeal in what is now a decade-long legal dispute over whether the company violated copyright law when it scanned millions of books into its online database.
The original lawsuit was brought against Google by the Authors Guild in 2005 and claimed that Google had violated copyright law by allowing readers to view up to 20 pages of copyrighted books without purchasing them.
After a nearly eight year battle stemming from a lawsuit brought on by authors accusing Google of digitally scanning books without permission, a judge has now officially sided with Google and dismissed the case. Reuters reports:
U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan accepted Google’s argument that its scanning of more than 20 million books for an electronic database, and making “snippets” of text available for online searches, constituted fair use.
“In my view, Google Books provide significant public benefits,” Chin wrote.
The ultimate decision was essentially that by scanning snippets of books to use with Google Books or in search, Google was providing more benefits to the authors than disadvantages. The judge is also quoted as calling the service “an essential research tool” that creates new income for authors and lets users discover content. GigaOM got the following statement from Google, but the Authors Guild is yet to speak out on the decision:
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