The Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust, et al.
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
902 F. Supp. 2d 445 (2012)
- Written by Eric Miller, JD
Facts
HathiTrust (defendant), a partnership of academic institutions, undertook a mass digitization project (MDP) to create digital copies of millions of books in collaboration with Google Books. Goals of the MDP included preserving rare physical books, giving researchers the ability to conduct full-text searches of the digitized books, and enabling vision-impaired researchers full access to the digitized books through an audible feature. Although many of the books were in the public domain, others were copyrighted. The Authors Guild, Inc. (plaintiff) brought suit against HathiTrust on behalf of the affected copyright holders in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. HathiTrust asserted the defense of fair use. Both sides moved for summary judgment.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Baer, Jr., J.)
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