It was a relatively slow news week for intellectual property. Perhaps that’s why Judge Denny Chen chose to issue his long-awaited decision in the copyright infringement case brought by book publishers against Google.
The publishers and Google had okayed a proposed agreement that would settle the suit, but the proposed settlement hit many bumps on the road. It had been revised substantially, and the final obstacle was the approval of Judge Chen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
This obstacle proved to be insurmountable as Judge Chen issued a decision on Tuesday rejecting the proposed settlement when he concluded that it was not fair, adequate, or reasonable. The judge found that the settlement would grant Google both “significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission from copyright owners” and “a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.”
He suggested that the proposed agreement might be acceptable if it was based on a system that allowed copyright owners to “opt in” to the settlement instead of the present “opt out” approach. In sum, although Judge Chen recognized that the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library are beneficial, he concluded that the proposed settlement went too far.