Court: Searchable books database is 'fair use'

NEW YORK (AP) — The creation of a full-text searchable database of millions of books is a fair use of copyrighted works, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, saying it also is permissible to distribute the books in alternative forms to people with reading disabilities.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision came in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by authors and several authors’ groups after several research universities agreed in 2004 to let Google Inc. electronically scan their books and then created a repository for more than 10 million books published over many centuries and written in numerous languages.