Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 11:28 AM
We're delighted to report that WBG, a German publisher, today decided to drop its petition for preliminary injunction against the Google Books Library Project. WBG (whose legal action was supported by the German Publishers Association as an industry model) made the decision after being told by the Copyright Chamber of the Regional Court of Hamburg that its petition was unlikely to succeed.
It's our belief that the display of short snippets from in-copyright books does not infringe German copyright law. Today the Court indicated that it agreed, drawing a comparison with the snippets used in Google web search. And the Court also rejected the WBG's argument that the scanning of its books in the U.S. infringed German copyright law.
For more on the good news, check out this post on the main Google blog. And if you'd like to learn more about the copyright issues surrounding the Library Project, you can visit the Facts & Fiction and Legal Analysis pages on the Google Book Search News & Views site.
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