Google might have had relief in a few lawsuits of late, but it seems that there would be no end to Google’s lawsuit list. The haunted Google Books lawsuit is back on track for trial. However, now the parties have enough time to talk and negotiate terms for a settlement. The time frame seems to have been set on purpose in this case.
Judge Denny today heard the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers from Google in a New York City courtroom. It related to talks which could help in the progress of the case.
Bloomberg reported that Jeannine Daralyn Durie, a lawyer for Google, detailed the judge that Google has been trying to make “substantial progress” in talks with publishers. A similar update was received from the American Association of Publishers who said that the talks were in progress:
“Today, we informed the court that the Association of American Publishers, the five publisher plaintiffs and Google have made good progress toward a settlement that would resolve the pending litigation regarding the Google Library Project.
The signs further looked good for the search engine giant as a lawyer for the Authors Guild, Michael Boni was noted saying that the group was even of the thoughts that a settlement should come in play with Google. This was as a Reuters report. Moreover, Judge Chin even is hopeful that a settlement is drawn in, but he was quick to note “you’re essentially starting from scratch.” As the negotiations are taking place, Judge Chin said that a schedule of events are there which would help moving the matter to the trial (if necessary) towards the middle of the next year.
James Grimelmann, Law Professor and Google Book legal expert has a blog post on his blog which related to the preliminary schedule. The schedule would begin as plaintiffs would move for a class certification by December 12, 2011. he even noted that a response from Google would be in by January 26, 2012. while the pretrial proceedings are on their way, settlement talks would go on side by side.
There was a question put up by the judge for the attorneys which was reported by Grimelmann. He said that Judge Chin wanted to know the attorneys thoughts on the framing on the case. He quoted the dialogue as:
Judge Chin asked whether the legal issues focused on the display of snippets, or whether the plaintiffs wanted to “expand” the suit. Both [Bruce] Keller [Attorney for Publishers] and Boni [Authors Guild] made a point of emphasizing that they saw the case more broadly. Keller explained that it was about copying, scanning, storing, and displaying the works (including, but not limited to snippets). Judge Chin expressed surprise that the list didn’t include “selling.”
Grimelmann has the updates for the calendar on his blog as well as on his Twitter Account.
Briefing about the history of this lawsuit, last year March the book scanning settlement of the authors and publishers with Google was rejected by a federal judge. As of now, Google might be working out for a settlement, but as individual authors would gain just around $60 to $300 per book, they might just come in to kill the possible settlement between the publishers and Google.