A federal judge is giving the parties in The Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc., 05 CCV 8136, more time to work out an acceptable settlement over Google Inc.’s plan for a huge digital library for out-of-print books. Southern District Judge Denny Chin said there would no longer be an Oct. 7 fairness hearing on the $125 million settlement, which ran into objections from U.S. Justice Department attorneys who said the deal probably violates anti-trust law (NYLJ, Sept. 22).
Judge Chin has received more than 400 submissions on the proposed settlement, many of them expressing disapproval. He said in a two-page order that the deal reached last year between U.S. authors and publishers and Google “raises significant issues, as demonstrated not only by the number of objections, but also by the fact that the objectors include countries, states, nonprofit organizations, and prominent authors and law professors.”
