The Google-Publishers Copyright Lawsuit Settlement

Wednesday, November 12, 2:00 pm
Berkman Center Conference Room, 23 Everett St. 2nd Floor
RSVP Required (rsvp@cyber.harvard.edu)

Join Jeffrey Cunard, one of the lead counsel for McGraw Hill and other publishers in their landmark copyright lawsuit against Google for its Google Library book search project, as he discusses the recent proposed settlement in the case.  The publishers’ lawsuit, and a similar class-action case by the Author’s Guild, both filed in late 2005, accused Google of massive copyright infringement for its plans to scan and make searchable digital copies of millions of books in several major university libraries and raised novel, important questions of the scope of the fair use right under copyright law. The settlement, if approved, would leave those fair use questions unanswered, but would permit much of the digitizing of and ability to search for books contemplated by Google’s original project to continue . . . and would provide compensation for many authors and publishers.  

Jeff Cunard is the managing partner of Debevoise & Plimpton’s Washington, DC office.  He is an internationally recognized expert in intellectual property and communications law, including copyright litigation, technology and cyberlaw, and in international media and telecommunications.  From 2004 to 2006 he was a Lecturer at HLS and Co-Director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  He and his partner Bruce Keller (who also was lead counsel to the publishers in the Google case) are the co-authors of Copyright Law: A Practitioner’s Guide   (2001-2007), published by Practising Law Institute.