Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Google As Copyright Iconoclast, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

Google’s role as a copyright defendant has provided fodder for many an essay in this series, particularly with regard to the Google Books litigation. (Incidentally, that litigation celebrates its tenth anniversary next month – and it’s still going strong.) A more recent Google case, however, is probably just as important, and it provides another interesting lesson in the Internet behemoth’s copyright litigation strategy.

The case is Oracle v. Google. In early 2010, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, the developer of Java, the popular cross-platform programming language. Soon thereafter, Oracle sued Google for copyright infringement, alleging that Google’s Android operating system copied …

Google Books: Game, Set, But Not Match, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

It’s back: Google Books, our favorite topic in this Intellectual Property Viewpoints series. Google Books is the project through which Google has brought its search capability to the text of more than 20 millions books (with the number still growing). To do so, Google must scan the book and convert the scan to readable text. And there’s the problem: Scanning is copying, and copying raises the question of whether the massive project is a massive violation of the copyrights in all those books. Thus the Authors Guild v. Google class action brought by authors and publishers against Google in a …

Google's (Fair) Use Of Copyrighted Work, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

Letters to the Editor on Google's (Fair) Use of Copyrighted Work