Publishers Join Campaign Against Google Print Project

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

21 October 2005

A group of five publishing firms this week filed suit against Google over its proposed Google Print Library Project, alleging that the initiative will entail substantial infringement of copyright.

In documents filed with the US District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group USA, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons called for the court to impose an injunction on Google, citing the "continuing, irreparable and imminent harm" that publishers are suffering as a result of the search portal's "wilful infringement to further its own commercial purposes".

Google responded by dubbing the legal action "short-sighted" and arguing that the project is designed "to make millions of books easier for people to find and buy".

This follows a class action filed in September by the Authors Guild and a Lincoln biographer, a children's book author, and a former Poet Laureate of the United States.

The suit alleged that the $90 billion search engine and advertising portal is engaging in massive copyright infringement at the expense of the rights of individual writers.

“This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law,” argued Authors Guild president Nick Taylor at the time, adding that:

“It's not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied.”

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