The Authors Guild, Inc. v. Hathitrust

755 F.3d 87 (2nd Cir. 2014)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Ds (HDL and Universities) got together and agreed to allow Google to electronically scan the books in their collections. In October 2008, Thirteen universities announced plans to create a repository for the digital copies and founded an organization called HathiTrust to set up and operate the HathiTrust Digital Library (HDL). HDL has 80 member institutions and the HDL contains digital copies of more than ten million works, published over many centuries, written in a multitude of languages, covering almost every subject imaginable. HDL allows the general public to search for particular terms across all digital copies in the repository. The search results show only the page numbers on which the search term is found within the work and the number of times the term appears on each page. HDL does not display to the user any text from the underlying copyrighted work (either in 'snippet' form or otherwise). The user is not able to view either the page on which the term appears or any other portion of the book. HDL allows member libraries to provide patrons with certified print disabilities access to the full text of copyrighted works. By preserving the copyrighted books in digital form, the HDL permits members to create a replacement copy of the work, if the member already owned an original copy, the member's original copy is lost, destroyed, or stolen, and a replacement copy is unobtainable at a 'fair' price elsewhere. The HDL stores digital copies of the works in four different locations. Some of the books in HDL were under copyright protection. At first, twenty authors and authors' associations (Ps) sued Ds for copyright infringement seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. Ds moved for summary judgment on the ground that their uses of copyrighted material were protected by the doctrine of fair use, § 107. The district court granted Ds summary judgment on the basis that the three uses permitted by the HDL were fair uses. The court gave considerable weight to what it found to be the 'transformative' nature of the three uses and to what it described as the HDL's 'invaluable' contribution to the advancement of knowledge. Ps appealed.