Judge throws out case against university libraries

October 12, 2012
The contested digitization project makes thousands of library materials available online.

This week a federal judge threw out the copyright infringement case against several university libraries, including the UW-Madison Libraries. The lawsuit, brought against the universities by the Authors Guild and other writers’ guilds, accused the libraries (all of whom participate in the HathiTrust Digital Library) of mass copyright infringement since they were digitizing in-copyright works without permission from the original authors.

The judge ruled that fair use protects the libraries in this digitization project.

Read the full story on Wired.

Read the official HathiTrust response on the judge’s ruling.

Update: Read an article by Jennifer Howard for the Chronicle of Higher Education on the case, and the wider implications of the judge’s ruling.