Authors lose class status in Google digital books case

Google Inc notched a legal victory in its bid to create the world’s largest digital books library, winning the reversal of a court order that had allowed authors challenging the project to sue as a group. A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said Circuit Judge Denny Chin prematurely certified a class of authors without first deciding if the "fair use" defense under U.S. copyright law allowed Google to display snippets of books. The three-judge panel also signaled it may prove improper to allow a class action on behalf of potentially hundreds of thousands of writers arguing that the Google Books Library Project improperly copied their works without permission.