Writers Sue Google for Copyright Infringement

A group representing more than 8,000 US writers is suing Google alleging that the company's attempt to digitise the book collections of several major libraries represents massive copyright infringement.

The lawsuit, filed by the Authors Guild in the US district court in Manhattan, is the first to arise from the Google Print Library program, the fledgling effort aimed at creating a searchable library of all the world's printed books.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status -allowing multiple plaintiffs - asks for damages and demands an injunction to halt further infringements.

As well as the Authors Guild, the largest society of published writers in the US, three writers are named as having brought the action: Daniel Hoffman, a former poet laureate of the US, Betty Miles, an author of children's and young adult fiction, and Herbert Mitgang, a former New York Times editorial writer and the author of a biography of Abraham Lincoln as well as novels and plays.

Each of the plaintiffs claims copyright to at least one literary work that is in the library of the University of Michigan, one of the libraries, along with Harvard and Stanford, that agreed to let Google create a database of their entire collection.

The company is also scanning books stored at the New York Public Library and Oxford University, but those two libraries are providing Google only with "public domain" works - material no longer protected by copyright. Oxford University's Bodleian Library will initially make an estimated 1m books from its 19th century collection available to Google.

At the time the project was announced in December last year, Reg Carr, director of Oxford University Library Services, commented: "We hope Oxford's contribution to this project will be of scholarly use, as well as general interest, to people around the world."

The overall project will involve scanning millions of titles - many of them rare and delicate - and making the text available on the internet via Google searches. It is a process which experts have predicted could take as long as 10 years.

The lawsuit is the latest round in the battle between Google and publishers that pit copyright holders' interests against the company's mission of "organising the world's information and making it more universally accessible and useful".

In August Google said it planned to temporarily scale back plans to make the full text of copyrighted books available on its internet site, while discussions with publishers and authors continued.

A Google spokesman said the company regretted that the Authors Guild had chosen to sue rather than continue discussions. "Google Print directly benefits authors and publishers by increasing awareness of and sales of the books in the programme," Google said in a statement. "Only small portions of the books are shown unless the content owner gives permission to show more."

But Nick Taylor, president of the New York-based Authors Guild, said: "This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law. 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."