Challenge to Google Books Is Declined by Supreme Court; New York Times, 4/18/16

Adam Liptak, New York Times; Challenge to Google Books Is Declined by Supreme Court:

"The Supreme Court on Monday refused to revive a challenge to Google’s digital library of millions of books, turning down an appeal from authors who said the project amounted to copyright infringement on a mass scale.

The Supreme Court’s brief order left in place an appeals court decision that the project was a “fair use” of the authors’ work, ending a legal saga that had lasted more than a decade...

As is their custom, the justices gave no reasons for declining to hear the case, Authors Guild v. Google Inc., No. 15-849.

Last year, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that Google’s project was lawful and beneficial.

“The purpose of the copying is highly transformative, the public display of text is limited and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals,” Judge Pierre N. Leval, an authority on copyright law, wrote for the panel."