Second Circuit Hints At Possible Google Books Outcome In Finding HathiTrust Digital Library Project Protected As Fair Use

Earlier this week, the Second Circuit issued its ruling in the HathiTrust case, a potential precursor to the long-awaited resolution of the more prominent, and related, Google Books case. The decision upholds the district court's finding that the non-profit defendant is protected by the fair use doctrine, but leaves room for a potentially different outcome in the Google Books matter. As we have reported, the Google Books project aims to scan and digitize all the world's books and make them full-text searchable. As part of the "Library Project" arm of Google Books, several research universities have allowed Google to digitize their extensive libraries. In addition to the digital copies kept by Google, the universities created the HathiTrust to maintain a separate repository of the digitized texts generated by Google's scanners.