UPDATE: Google Tries to Knock Out Digital Library Class Action Suit

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Insisting that scanning 20 million books to create the world's largest digital library constitutes a fair use, Google, Inc., last week filed a motion in a New York federal court to dismiss a class action copyright infringement suit, Paid Content (www.paidcontent.org) reports.

The seven-year-old case, The Authors Guild, Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. (Case No. 12-3200) (see "TUOL" posts 9/19/12, 2/19/10) involves a claim by the 8,500-member Guild that Google violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act [Pub. Law 105-304] by infringing on authors' works.  In its latest motion, Google argues that digital scanning is a transformative use of the copyrighted works and not an infringement. The search engine giant also contends that the authors should not be allowed to sue collectively as a class because many of them allegedly favor the digital scanning.

The Authors Guild wants $750 per book from Google, but Google maintains the scanned versions don't compete with the hand-held existing versions of the books at issue and do not diminish the value of the existing books.