joegratz.net

According to this Reuters story, wire service Agence France Presse has sued Google for copyright infringement. Google’s Google News service aggregates news headlines and thumbnails of news photos, linking them to the original stories.

Curiously, though the Reuters story indicates that the suit was filed in D.C. federal district court, I can’t find any record of the case in that court’s docket. Perhaps I’m not searching for the right thing. (Does anybody have a case number or a copy of the complaint?) [UPDATE: Eric Goldman of Marquette Law School has posted the complaint here.]

While courts have held that search engine use of thumbnail images is fair use, that case is potentially distinguishable because using a thumbnail to illustrate a news headline is arguably a less transformative use than using a thumbnail to help a user find a website or an image on the web. Of course, Arriba Soft is only binding precedent if Google can change the venue to someplace in the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction; I’d guess one of Google’s first motions will be to move the case to the Northern District of California.

Expect Google to be defending a lot of copyright litigation in the coming years. As I’ve mentioned before, Google’s services are consistently just slightly on the prudent side of the line. If Google is lucky (and having extremely able counsel like Google’s always makes you luckier), a lot of good law could be made as Google defends its fair use rights.