Google settles with publishers; to pay $125 million

29 October 2008

Google will pay $125 million to settle copyright violation lawsuits brought by five publishers including Pearson Education, Penguin Group, John Wiley & Sons, Simon & Schuster, and the McGraw-Hill Companies filed in October 2005 and a class action suit filed a month earlier by the authors Guild, arising from its Google Books Search that involved scanning millions of library books.

Google has about 7 million books scanned.

The agreement, subject to approval by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, will lead to the setting up of a book-rights registry, which will make available the scanned books for viewing by millions of 'Googlers' either in part or fully and payment made to copyright holders.

Of that the $125 million that Google has agreed to pay, $30 million will be used by the publishers and the search engine giant to jpintly establish the registry.

Problems for Google arose when some of the libraries participating in Google's book-scanning programme scanned the entire  copyrighted books raising objections from publishers who said scanning the full book without permission, and storing it for public viewing violated copyrights. In its defence Google said that creating a massive card catalog to let users view only brief excerpts of books, should not involve its having to seek express permission to scan the books.

The settlement ends the lawsuits and allows useres to expand their online book searches, from about three or four lines currently to several pages and let readers buy full access to the content, the parties said.