Authors ask Supreme Court to hear appeal against Google ruling

9 February 2016 Books+Publishing

In the US, the Authors Guild is petitioning the Supreme Court to hear its case alleging Google breached copyright by digitising millions of books, reports the Guardian. The petition has the support of numerous well-known authors, including Australians Peter Carey, J M Coetzee, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan. The long-running case began in 2005 when Google began digitising in-copyright works without permission, and in 2013 a lawsuit against Google was dismissed on the grounds that the ‘snippets of text it makes available to users, constituted fair use’. The Authors Guild’s appeal against the ruling was rejected in October 2015 by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The petition for the Supreme Court to hear the appeal also has the support of publishers and copyright organisations. In the filing, the authors write that the fair use doctrine was not intended ‘to permit a wealthy for-profit entity to digitise millions of works and to cut off authors’ licensing of their reproduction, distribution, and public display rights’.

Category: International news