Judge gives OK to authors, photographers to sue Google over book scanning

In a major development in the long-running case over Google’s unauthorized book-scanning, a federal judge ruled that groups representing authors and photographers could go forward with a class action.

The ruling is a setback for Google which asked Judge Denny Chin earlier this month to remove The Authors Guild and a photographers’ group from the lawsuit. Google had also argued that a class action was not appropriate because many authors were in favor of having their works appear in the company’s search results. Chin’s ruling means the stage is now set for a trial on whether Google’s decision to scan millions of books amounted to fair use under copyright law. This fair use question has triggered passionate debate among lawyers and scholars, and reflects Google’s position at the time it was sued by the Authors’ Guild and a consortium of publishers in 2005.