Google's book-scanning project ruled to be legal 'fair use'

NEW YORK -- Google's book-scanning project is back on track.

The world's biggest search provider can keep adding to its digital library of millions of books without paying their authors, a U.S. appeals court said, ruling that the effort is "fair use" of published material under copyright law.

Google, which has scanned more than 20 million books since 2004, has said that its goal is to provide a "virtual card catalog" of all books in all languages, so that people can search and find excerpts. At the same time, the Web company said it makes sure to respect authors' and publishers' copyrights, while providing links to where people can buy or borrow a book. The court's decision gives institutions -- public or private, large or small -- a template for how they can scan and share books, according to Brandon Butler, a practitioner-in-residence at American University's Washington College of Law.

"It's a charter document for anyone who wants to do research on books and to learn about books, which means librarians, search companies," Butler said. "If you're a relatively informed reader of these cases there's enough here, now, that you can design a mass digitization program."

A three-judge panel of the New York-based court said Friday that Google's purpose of helping people find books and view excerpts online is legal. The ruling promises to help Mountain View, California-based Google retain its dominance in Web searches. The court also approved Google's Library Project, which provides digital copies of books for participating research libraries.

"Google's unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses," U.S. Circuit Judge Pierre Leval wrote on behalf of the court. "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."

"Today's decision underlines what people who use the service tell us: Google Books gives them a useful and easy way to find books they want to read and buy, while at the same time benefiting copyright holders," said Gina Scigliano, a spokeswoman for Google. "We're pleased the court has confirmed that the project is fair use, acting like a card catalog for the digital age."

The appeals panel upheld a lower-court decision throwing out a copyright lawsuit by writers including Jim Bouton, the former New York Yankees pitcher and author of "Ball Four" -- a behind-the-scenes look at life in the major leagues published in 1970.

This story was originally published October 17, 2015 at 12:10 AM with the headline "Google's book-scanning project ruled to be legal 'fair use' ."