The Washington Post reports that:
The decade-long legal battle over Google’s massive book scanning project is finally over, and it’s a huge win for libraries and fair use. On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the Author’s Guild, which had argued that Google’s scanning of millions of books was an infringement of copyright on a grand scale. The Supreme Court’s decision means that the Second Circuit case holding that Google’s creation of a database including millions of digital books is fair use still stands. The appeals court explained how its fair use rationale aligns with the very purpose of copyright law: “[W]hile authors are undoubtedly important intended beneficiaries of copyright, the ultimate, primary intended beneficiary is the public, whose access to knowledge copyright seeks to advance by providing rewards for authorship.”
