Yahoo Refuses to Help Google in Book Case
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Google will not be receiving any help from Yahoo in the case brought against it by the Author's Guild. Yahoo called Google's subpoena an attempt to force it to divulge trade secrets, and has refused to testify.
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In its response to a subpoena it received from Google regarding efforts to built a digital library, attorneys for Yahoo argue that their client is not actually developing a competing project. Furthermore, they say Google has no business inquiring about "ideas" that Yahoo employees may have had.
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US Internet giant Yahoo!, accused of providing information that led to the jailing of a Chinese journalist, did not violate privacy laws, the Hong Kong government said Wednesday.
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PARIS - Yahoo Inc. may after all find itself having to answer to the French courts for its failure to block French users' access to information about the sale of Nazi memorabilia on its U.S. Web sites.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has expanded its controversial book search service to allow people to download whole copies of books in PDF format to their computers, with the ability to print them out. The feature will go live Wednesday at theÂ service's Web site, said Adam Smith, group product manager of Google Book Search and Google Scholar. The books available for download will only be those that are in the public domain and thus not protected by copyright, Smith said. Until now, people have been able to read these public-domain books on the Google Book Search Web site, but not download and print them, he said. Google will not allow downloading of copyrighted books, not even those for which it has obtained permission from the copyright holders to display their full text, Smith said. The vast majority of the public-domain books available for download have been scanned as part of the library project of the Google Book Search service, Smith said. For the project,Â Google is scanningÂ portions of the collections of some of the world's largest academic libraries, including Google partners Harvard University, Stanford University, and Oxford University. However, critics say Google can't scan copyrighted books it obtains from the libraries unless it gets permission from the copyright holders. The issue is at the center ofÂ two separate lawsuits brought against GoogleÂ last year, one by The Authors Guild and three authors, and another one by The Association of American Publishers on behalf of five of its members: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group USA, Simon & Schuster, and John Wiley & Sons.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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An independent report filed on  Friday in an Arkansas court sided with Google over disgruntled  advertisers who had sued the search engine giant accusing it of  trying to drive up fees through so-called click fraud.
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BRUSSELS/LONDON  - Google Inc. GOOG.O has lost a   bid to overturn a Belgian court order that requires it to   publish an earlier ruling forbidding it from reproducing   article snippets on its news amalgamation service.
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Looks like Yahoo Search has an interesting loophole or lack of communication between the quality control at the Search division and the Search Submit sales department at Yahoo Search Marketing. According to a discussion in Search Engine Watch Forums, a member had his site banned by Yahoo Search and was denied reinclusion into their search index. [...]
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Google Inc. on Saturday published on  its Belgian website a court order which forbids the Internet  search engine to reproduce snippets of Belgian press on its  news amalgamation service.
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Did Yahoo break U.S. law by supplying confidential information about dissidents that led to their imprisonment and torture by the Chinese government? On Monday, the Internet giant asked a federal judge in Oakland, California to dismiss a lawsuit that claims it did.
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Google responded on Friday to a lawsuit filed against it by Northeastern University, denying claims that its search service infringes on patented technology.Google denied all charges in the suit, which was&#160;filed jointly by Northeastern, of Boston, and a search technology company called Jarg, of Waltham, Mass. Google also filed a counterclaim asking the court to dismiss the patent as invalid.The&#160;suit was filed in November&#160;in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. It seeks an injunction preventing Google from further infringement, as well as royalty payments and damages.The patent in question describes a distributed database system that breaks queries into fragments and distributes them to multiple computers in a network to get faster search results.The plaintiffs say that Google uses this system to run its search engine, and that the system was invented by Kenneth Baclawski, an associate professor at Northeastern and one of Jarg&#39;s founders. Northeastern was awarded a patent for the system, which it has licensed exclusively to Jarg.In its response Friday, Google argued that the patent is invalid and should not have been awarded in the first place. It cites various sections of U.S. patent law, including those that deal with the novelty of an invention and prior art. It also cites the doctrine of &quot;laches,&quot; which essentially requires plaintiffs to file lawsuits in a timely manner.Its counterclaim asks the court to declare the patent invalid and unenforceable.Both parties have requested a jury trial, and legal experts have said the case could be resolved in 18 months to two years.The U.S. patent, number 5,694,593, is dated Dec. 2, 1997, and can be viewed by searching the Web site of the U.S. Patent &amp; Trademark Office. U.S. patent law is also described on the USPTO Web site in this PDF file. Google&#39;s reply cites sections 101, 102, 103, and 112.
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(InfoWorld) - Legal experts are split in their evaluation of Google's defense strategy in two copyright-infringement lawsuits, particularly regarding the company's arm-twisting attempts to extract confidential information from uninvolved competitors. Some view Google's tactics as aggressive, unusual and ultimately ineffective, while others see them as part of a fairly standard defense in copyright litigation. Google sent subpoenas to Amazon.com, Yahoo and Microsoft demanding they provide it with information about their book-scanning activities, a move that raised eyebrows because those companies are among its biggest rivals. Google plans to use this information in its defense in two lawsuits filed last year. The suits allege that Google's massive project to scan, make searchable and store digital copies of millions of copyrighted library books without permission from the copyright owner is illegal. Google is also scanning books in the public domain. Google argues that its scanning is protected under the fair use principle, which allows for limited use of copyright material, because it only displays text snippets of copyrighted books' content in response to queries in its Book Search service. That overall argument, along with the subpoena tactic, demonstrates Google is willing to mount an atypical and pugnacious defense, said Lee Bromberg, a partner at Bromberg & Sunstein LLP, a firm that specializes in intellectual property litigation. "This [subpoena action] isn't par for the course at all in this type of case," he said. With the subpoenas, Google is trying to argue that if its competitors are scanning books, it follows that Google is acting legally, according to Bromberg. "But I don't think it's evidence of that at all, and I think it's out of line for Google to do this," Bromberg said. This type of subpoena is usually used to get evidence from an uninvolved third party that may have relevant information about the litigation. For example, it would make sense for Google to subpoena information from one of its business partners, or from a partner of one of the plaintiffs, Bromberg said. "Those partners might possess documents that could be relevant to sorting out the issues between Google and the plaintiff publishers here. But that doesn't seem to be the case," Bromberg said. Wendy Seltzer, a Fellow at the Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and an expert on Internet law and intellectual property, said the subpoenas might be part of a more conventional defense, in which Google will try to prove that book-scanning isn't hurting copyright owners nor the publishing market. Google's ultimate goal will be to have the court say its activities are protected by the fair use principle, which allows for limited use of copyright material, she said. Already Yahoo and Amazon.com have refused to comply with the subpoenas and have indicated in court filings that they are determined to stand their ground against what they consider an inappropriate and overreaching request from Google. Microsoft declined to comment when asked how it has responded or plans to respond to the subpoena. What's clear is that the subpoena standoff could further complicate and lengthen an already complex case that, barring an unexpected settlement, could drag on for years. After the refusals from Yahoo and Amazon.com, the ball is in Google's court. Google has the option to file a motion with the court to compel its two rivals to comply with the subpoena request. If the court were to grant that motion to compel, Amazon.com and Yahoo would probably have a choice to escalate the matter to an appeals court. "That [the subpoena clash] in itself can become a protracted battle," said Sheldon Klein, an attorney specializing in intellectual property and a partner at Arent Fox PLLC in Washington, D.C. Google declined to answer specific questions, providing only a prepared statement via e-mail that characterized the subpoena and objection process as "a common part of ongoing litigation." It intends to speak with Yahoo and Amazon.com over their concerns, Google said. Amazon.com declined to comment on whether it is holding talks with Google, but Yahoo doesn't foresee much chance of arriving at some middle ground. "Google will quickly learn we're not interested in some lesser compromise position. Our position is that we're not going to produce documents in response to the subpoena," said Reggie Davis, who is associate general counsel at Yahoo and manages litigation for the company. Like Bromberg, Davis finds Google's subpoena action surprising and aggressive, in large part because Yahoo doesn't even have its own book-scanning project. Its activities in this area are limited to its participation in a collective effort known as the Open Content Alliance, which doesn't scan copyrighted books without permission from the copyright owner. "It seems to us that their approach is completely different from ours, so we're surprised they'd want to get information from us about our approach, which is to get permission before copying. And it seems to us to be completely irrelevant and not particularly helpful to Google's argument or justification for their approach," Davis said. The plaintiffs in the Book Search cases -- the Association of American Publishers (AAP), acting on behalf of five of its members, and the Authors Guild Inc. and three authors -- aren't the only ones questioning the copyright legality of a Google search service. Others are suing Google in the U.S. and abroad for similar reasons over its news, image and video search engines.
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The judge in GEICO&#39;s trademark infringement case against Google and Yahoo!&#39;s Overture division has declined the defendants&#39; motions to dismiss, effectively giving the go-ahead to a case with big implications for search engines&#39; use of trademarks as
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SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court rejected on Monday an effort by Yahoo Inc. to have US courts step into a battle over the sale of Nazi paraphernalia in France.
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Live Search Books rivals Google Book Search, but limits selection.
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Yahoo shareholders reject plans for the company to adopt a policy opposing censorship on the internet.
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Google Inc. refused to comply Wednesday with a Belgian court decision that required the company to publish the original text of the ruling on its sites, calling that requirement "unnecessary" and "disproportionate."