Daralyn J. Durie

Durie has been representing Google Inc. in two cases involving its Google Books product, one brought by The Authors Guild Inc. and another by the American Society of Media Photographers Inc.

The Authors Guild case was certified as a class action by a district court in New York, but Durie recently got that ruling overturned by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which directed the district judge to hear summary judgment motions before readdressing the certification question. The Authors Guild et al. v. Google Inc., 05-CV-08136 (S.D.N.Y., filed Sept. 20, 2005). Those arguments will be heard Sept. 23.

The cases result from Google's library project, which involved scanning books from libraries to create an online catalog that features screen shots of various pages, giving customers access to snippets of books for sale and entire copies of out-of-print tomes in some circumstances.

Durie maintains that Google Books constitutes fair use because it only provides small sections of text.

"Google Books is something that helps find the books but doesn't substitute for reading the books," she said.

Durie said the 2nd Circuit ruling boded well for her case not only because it reneged class certification but also because of the court's tone.

"The 2nd Circuit panel asked a lot of questions about the fair use issues and was clearly very interested and engaged with them in a way that we thought was very positive," she said.

The photography case, which involves portions of books that include copyrighted images, will likely be heavily influenced by the outcome of the Authors Guild case. The American Society of Media Photographers et al. v. Google Inc., 10-CV-2977 (S.D.N.Y., filed April 7, 2010).

"One would expect that we're going to get a decision in the authors' case first, and that's obviously going to have a significant impact because they're related."

- JOSHUA SEBOLD