US Court To Decide On Amended Google Book Settlement

On 13 November, an amended settlement agreement was filed with the Court by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and Google in Authors Guild v. Google, and a motion for preliminary approval of the amended settlement, according to the Authors Guild website.

According to the Guild, some noticeable changes have appeared in this new version of the settlement, such as representation of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom on the book registry board, the creation of a court-approved independent fiduciary responsible for decisions about “unclaimed” works. Unclaimed funds will be held for 10 years instead of five, and future business models have been trimmed to three: individual subscriptions, print-on-demand and digital download. Also, time to make claims for book digitisation payments has been extended to 31 March 2011.

The original lawsuit dates back to 2005 after Google announced its agreement with several libraries to digitise books and other writings and had allegedly digitised books still under copyrights in the United States, the Guild said.

The parties came to a settlement on 28 October 2008 but the settlement agreement had brought a number of objections from both inside the United States and abroad. The US Justice Department also expressed concerns about the settlement, noting that it was “one of the most far-reaching class action settlements of which the United States is aware.” (IPW, IP-Burble, 23 September 2009)

According to the “settlement website,” the parties also “seek court approval of a Supplemental Notice, which, if approved, will be sent out in early December 2009.”