Google Wins Copyright Battle; Archiving Issue Is Still Unclear By KEVIN J. DELANEY Wall Street Journal
March 17, 2006; Page B4 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114254831293000574.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing Google Inc. of wrongful conduct, including copyright infringement and defamation, providing the latest court opinion to weigh in on the contentious area of search engines and copyright. Some legal experts said the ruling, issued last week in a case brought by Internet publisher Gordon Roy Parker in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, could influence judges in other cases pending against Google, potentially bolstering the Internet company's legal defenses. Those cases include high-profile suits brought last year by writers and publishers and by the Agence France-Presse news agency alleging that Google's services violate copyright. But some legal experts said the Parker decision on its own didn't establish binding precedent, and disagreed on whether it shows any trend in judicial analysis, when taken together with other recent court opinions in cases against Google. Mr. Parker owns Snodgrass Publishing Group in Philadelphia, whose Web site distributes content, including guides that promise to instruct men how to seduce women. His suit centered on 11 claims against Google, including that Google's archiving of copyright material he posted on the Usenet community of electronic bulletin boards violated copyright laws. Mr. Parker also alleged that Google's inclusion of excerpts from his site in its search results infringed copyright. In his March 10 opinion dismissing the suit, Judge R. Barclay Surrick wrote that those activities and Google's temporary storage of Web pages, a practice known as "caching," didn't constitute direct infringement of copyright. Judge Surrick explained his conclusions in part by comparing Google's activities with those of Internet service providers, which transmit and temporarily store information but are indifferent to content. William Patry, an attorney specializing in copyright issues at Thelen Reid & Priest in New York, said the Parker decision was noteworthy because it dismissed the claims of copyright infringement on their face without discussing "fair use," a legal doctrine allowing the use of copyright material for purposes including teaching and research. Google litigation counsel Michael Kwun said, "The Parker decision is one of several recent rulings finding that Google's services are consistent with principles of copyright law." Mr. Parker said he planned to appeal the decision. Google's "entire business model is based on freeloading on other people's content," he said. In his decision, Judge Surrick cited a January ruling in Google's favor in U.S. District Court in Nevada. That ruling, in a copyright suit brought by author and attorney Blake A. Field, upheld Google's making available to users through its search results copies of Web pages it had cached. In another opinion, a federal judge in Los Angeles last month concluded that Google's image-search service likely infringed the copyrights of adult-entertainment company Perfect 10 Inc. by displaying small versions of its images. But he said that Google likely couldn't be held responsible when users clicked on the images and accessed third-party sites displaying images stolen from Perfect 10. "There's stuff in each of these cases both sides can quote from," said Joshua Kaufman, an attorney representing the Agence France-Presse in its pending suit against Google in U.S. District Court in Washington, alleging that the Google News service violated copyrights on the news agency's content. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
