The Google Books case has been going on now since 2005, when the Author’s Guild and others filed suit against Google’s scanning entire libraries of books, claiming that Googles efforts were copyright infringement.
There was a Fairness hearing originally scheduled for today, leading to a settlement, but there has been so much opposition to that settlement that it’s mandatory that the Author’s Guild and Google negotiate something a bit more acceptable.
In an article today, Reuters is reporting that Manhattan Federal Court Judge Denny Chin said he hoped the parties would file a motion for preliminary approval of an amended deal by Nov. 9 allowing a hearing to be held in late December or early January for final approval.
If an agreement can be reached, it will most likely allow Google Inc. to put millions of books on the Internet – including many books we haven’t seen thus far. The agreement issues are immense, as antitrust, copyright and privacy are all in play.
The parties seem to think they will be able to get an agreement by the November date, so we may be seeing this thing concluded soon.
