Authors Guild drops copyright complaint but still claims victory
The Authors Guild, a trade body representing US-based writers, has dropped a copyright complaint but still claimed victory despite having its suit rejected by two US courts.
In 2011 the Guild filed a copyright infringement suit against the HathiTrust over its digital library scheme—an online database containing more than ten million works. It is based at the University of Michigan.
In June last year, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a ruling by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that said the HathiTrust’s scheme did not infringe the Guild’s copyright.
On January 6, the Guild agreed to drop its complaint but requested that the HathiTrust inform it of any changes to its practices of reproducing works on the database.
Despite this and the court rulings, Mary Rasenberger, executive director at the Guild, said its “pursuit of the claim was ultimately a success” because “it led directly to HathiTrust’s abandonment of the orphan works project”.
The orphan works project was a scheme set up by the HathiTrust to provide access to copyright protected works whose owners were impossible to contact or identify. It was abandoned in 2011.
Rasenberger said: “The stipulation filed resolves one of our biggest concerns with the HathiTrust digital library—namely, that its copying wasn’t done in accordance with the rules for library copying laid out in the Copyright Act.”
A spokesperson for the HathiTrust said that intellectual property laws are about “balancing the rights of the public and copyright holders”.
“During the course of this lawsuit, federal courts have cogently and consistently ruled that the services we provide are lawful, non-infringing uses that fall well within the definition of fair use.“These rulings have reminded us all that copyright law promotes the progress of knowledge and discovery,” the spokesperson added.
The Guild is currently engaged in a similar dispute with search engine Google. The association had a copyright infringement claim against Google Books—a service that provides access to snippets of more than 20 million works online—rejected in 2013. The Guild has since appealed against the decision.
