Google Book, Settled and Unsettled.

According to Reuters, Google and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) have reached a settlement in the long-running Google Book Search Litigation. Details remain sketchy. The settlement does not affect Google’s current litigation with the Authors Guild.

Nature has just published a comment piece by Matthew Jockers, Jason Schultz myself explaining why humanities scholars filed amicus briefs in the Authors Guild v. Google and Authors Guild v. HathiTrust lawsuits. These suits are still very much alive and it is not clear that the Authors Guild has the same incentives to settle as the AAP did.

Additional Links:

  • Joint Press Release
  • Techdirt comment that this is exactly what Google offered 7 years ago. “Basically, this settlement is AAP admitting that the entire lawsuit was a waste of time and money.”
  • James Grimmelman’s summary. “the settlement does not change the situation on the ground in any significant way”
  • Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly quotes AAP president Tom Allen saying “[we] out an arrangement that doesn’t resolve the legal issues. We agree to disagree on those, but as a practical matter, it does resolve our differences with Google.”