Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology promising to disrupt how artwork is created, software is developed, and text is written. This disruption brings with it a host of new legal questions surrounding...more
Last month, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., the long-running copyright case involving Google’s Google Books project. The high court’s refusal to hear the case leaves in place the Second...more
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari over a Second Circuit decision (Authors’ Guild v. Google Inc.) affirming that Google’s project of digitizing, and making available online for searching, tens of millions of...more
Last October, the 2nd Circuit held that the Google Books project qualified as fair use. The decision came after a decade long legal battle between the Authors Guild and Google. The Authors Guild appealed the case to the...more
Google, or its parent company Alphabet, is the most valuable company in the world. It doesn't want for much and, least of all, for ambition and imagination. So its revolutionary Google Library project, to catalog and...more
Those of us of a certain age (read: old) still recall standing in line at the bank of copy machines in the school library, quarters in hand, waiting to copy a few pages of a key piece of research found in the stacks. Those...more
Be Reasonable: The U.S. Supreme Court Agrees to Review the Standard for Awarding Attorneys' Fees to the Prevailing Party in Copyright Infringement Suits - Why it matters: On January 15, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court...more
Based on the defense of fair use, the Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Google in the decade-long copyright battle between an authors group and the Internet search giant. The lawsuit concerned Google’s right to...more
Judge Leval Illuminates Google Books Fair Use Issues - Second Circuit Affirms Summary Judgment for Defendant in Massive Copying Case - Based on the defense of fair use, the Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment...more
Addressing the boundaries of fair use in copyright law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Second Circuit found that the making of digital copies of tens of millions of books to establish a publicly available search function was a...more
A longstanding battle between Google and the authors of published books has been resolved (at least for now) in favor of Google. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has held that Google’s use of copyrighted books in its...more
A for-profit corporation scans millions of in-copyright books and permanently stores their full contents in its database, all without seeking permission or paying the books’ authors or publishers. Over ten years ago, when...more
Fantasy Sports Has a New Teammate: Nevada Gaming Commission - Nevada's Gaming Control Board announced that fantasy sports will be regulated like other forms of gambling, and ordered operators to halt operation in the...more
On Oct. 16, 2015, the 2nd Circuit issued an opinion that has finally closed the chapter on the Google Books saga. In Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc., the court held that the Google Books project is fair use rather than a...more
On October 16, 2015, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling in Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc., 954 F. Supp. 2d 282 (S.D.N.Y. 2013), previously reported here, that Google’s digitization of complete...more
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that Google's digitization of books for use in its Google Books and Google Books Library Project is not copyright infringement. The Court also ruled that providing a public...more
Earlier this week, the Second Circuit issued its ruling in the HathiTrust case, a potential precursor to the long-awaited resolution of the more prominent, and related, Google Books case. The decision upholds the district...more
With the new year underway, we take a look back at some of the intellectual property-related highlights of 2013. Not only did the federal copyright and trademark agencies face a full-blown government shutdown this past year,...more
Since 2004, the Google Books project has scanned over 20 million books and has provided digital copies of the books to participating libraries while also creating a searchable database of books. The Google Books database...more
FTC Settles With Mobile Crammers - In the Federal Trade Commission’s first lawsuit over mobile cramming, Wise Media and two individual defendants agreed to a permanent ban on placing unauthorized charges on telephone...more
On November 15, Judge Chin of the Southern District of New York issued a long-awaited decision in the Google Books case, Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc. Google Books — the project through which Google provides access to...more
When last we looked in on the Google Books dispute, the Second Circuit had overturned class certification in the suit, brought by the Authors Guild and multiple individual authors, on the basis that the District Court first...more
There’s no question that Google’s massive book digitization project has enormous social benefits. Researchers and students are able to find and analyze relevant information more quickly than ever before, authors and...more
In 2004, Google announced a project that, at the time, seemed audacious: a universal library, searchable online. Book lovers rejoiced. “This is our chance to one-up the Greeks!” one archivist said (echoing what the rest of...more