Un-Google That; ABA Journal, 9/1/10

Brendan L. Smith, ABA Journal; Un-Google That: Google's new pact may have crisscrossed copyright law:

"At the fairness hearing for the Google Books settlement, an overflow crowd filled U.S. District Judge Denny Chin's Manhattan courtroom and spilled into a separate room where spectators watched a video feed.

"Voluminous materials have been submitted, and we are working our way through them," Chin said at the Feb. 18 hearing. "There is a lot of repetition. Some of the submissions even quote some of the other submissions. I'm reading them twice."

The agreement weighs in at 179 pages with 16 attachments, and it has been opposed on several fronts, with the Justice Department raising antitrust concerns alongside authors' claims of copyright infringement."

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/un-google_that/78714/

The Google Book Search Case: March Madness Edition; Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/5/10

Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education; The Google Book Search Case: March Madness Edition:

"The February 18 fairness hearing on the revised settlement in the Google Books lawsuit has come and gone, and the world now waits for word from Denny Chin, the federal judge in charge of the case. It could be a long wait. At the Association of American Publishers meeting held in Washington this week, there was talk that we might not hear from the judge for a couple of months. (He could issue a ruling anytime, of course.)

One question on the minds of everyone following the settlement is : What happens after the judge rules? Jonathan Band, a specialist in technology law and policy, has created a nifty chart of possible paths the settlement might take, depending on what Judge Chin decides. Called "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement," the chart lays out a many-branched tree of appeals or litigation, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

In a note, Mr. Band points out that even a chart as complex as his does not lay out all the possible twists and turns the case could still take. "For example, it does not mention stays pending appeals nor whether litigation would proceed as a class action," he writes. And it doesn't talk about why Judge Chin might reject or accept the deal, or whether Congress might step in at some juncture.

"In short, the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament," Mr. Band observes."

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The-Google-Book-Search-Case-/21643/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Judge rejects Amazon bid to scrap Google pact; Reuters, 12/2/09

Reuters; Judge rejects Amazon bid to scrap Google pact:

"A federal judge has rejected Amazon.com Inc's request that he withdraw preliminary approval of a settlement between Google Inc and groups of authors and publishers to digitize millions of books.

In a Tuesday ruling, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said he planned to conduct a "thorough fairness analysis" of the settlement at a February 18, 2010 hearing and Amazon could argue its case then."

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE5B15KY20091202

U.S. Urges Court to Reject Google Book Deal; New York Times, 9/18/09

Reuters via New York Times; U.S. Urges Court to Reject Google Book Deal:

"The U.S. Justice Department urged a New York court on Friday to reject Google's controversial deal with authors and publishers that would allow the search engine giant to create a massive online digital library.

The Justice Department said in a filing that the court "should reject the proposed settlement in its current form and encourage the parties to continue negotiations to modify it so as to comply with ... copyright and antitrust laws...

A fairness hearing on the deal has been set for October 7 in the federal court in Manhattan.

The case is Authors Guild et al v Google Inc 05-08136 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan)"

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/09/18/technology/tech-us-google-books.html