Google Settles Case Challenging Book Digitization Project

Google, Inc., the Authors Guild and the Assn. of American Publishers have reached a settlement ending a legal battle over whether Google can digitize millions of books and make the results available through online searches.

Under the proposed agreement, which still requires court approval, Google would pay $125 million to establish a “Book Rights Registry” that is intended to resolve existing claims and provide a way for copyright holders to receive compensation in the future through institutional subscriptions, book sales, and ad revenues from Google. Owners of the copyrighted works would need to sign up with the registry to receive payments.

Google began in 2004 to digitize books and make portions of the books available online through searching on Google Book. In two class action lawsuits, the copyright holders for the works challenged Google’s right to digitize the books and to make portions of the books available online.

Google plans to offer institutional subscriptions to its digitized library and to allow searches whereby the public could see up to 20 per cent of the book without charge. For viewing more of the work, Google would charge a fee and also provide a way to purchase the entire book. The money collected from the fee and sales would be shared by Google and the copyright owners, who also would receive a portion of the revenue from advertisements that appear with the search results.

Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Assn. of American Publishers, said in a press release that “[t]he agreement creates an innovative framework for the use of copyrighted material in a rapidly digitizing world, serves readers by enabling broader access to a huge trove of hard-to-find books, and benefits the publishing community by establishing an attractive commercial model that offers both control and choice to the rightsholder.”

A copy of the proposed settlement is available below for downloading.

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