Court Ruled Google Did Not Violate Copyright
A federal appeals court ruled that Google can legally show thumbnail-sized versions of copyrighted images in its search results. In a case that may predict the course of the Google Book Search suits by authors and publishers, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction against Google that stemmed from a copyright infringement suit filed by adult entertainment company Perfect 10.
Perfect 10 originally filed the suit against Google and Amazon.com in U.S. District Court, claiming the two violated its copyright by showing small versions of Perfect 10’s images in search engine results. But the 3-judge court said that Google’s use was transformative and constituted Fair Use.
On a second issue, the court remanded the case to the lower court to evaluate whether Google was a contributory infringer by not doing enough to avoid including links in its search results to sites where infringers had posted full-sized copies of Perfect 10’s images.
An appeal by either party would put the case, and many of Google’s practices, before the Supreme Court even before the Google Book Search suits are heard in lower courts.
