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DOJ to investigate antitrust implications of Google book search settlement agreement

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Officials from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said Tuesday that the DOJ has begun looking into whether a settlement agreement involving Internet search company Google, Inc. over two copyright infringement lawsuits stemming from its book-scanning initiative violates antitrust laws. The two lawsuits were brought against Google by the Authors Guild, an advocacy group seeking to preserve copyright protection for authors, and by other plaintiffs including the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Penguin Group (USA), Inc., and Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, which was reached in October, Google would pay $125 million to authors and publishers of copyrighted works. In return, Google would be allowed to display online up to 20 percent of the total pages of a copyrighted book, and would offer users an opportunity to purchase the remainder of any viewed book. DOJ lawyers have notified the parties to the settlement about the inquiry and have spoken with groups opposed to the settlement. The DOJ will not necessarily oppose the settlement, which still awaits court approval. Also Tuesday, the federal judge overseeing the case extended the deadline from May 5 to September 4 for authors to decide whether to join in the settlement. The two lawsuits were originally brought against Google in 2005. In September 2005, The Authors Guild alleged "massive copyright infringement at the expense of the rights of individual writers." The lawsuit accused Google of engaging in unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Print Library Project. The AAP lawsuit, filed in October 2005, alleged that Google infringed copyrights held by a number of publishing companies when it scanned the entire book collections of several universities to make them searchable online.VOTE FOR JURIST JURIST is nominated for a 2009 Webby Award as best Law website. Please vote for us here!

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on April 29, 2009 (boomark / email).