CCIA: Victory in Perfect 10 case, Fair Use, Industry, Consumers Win

File Under: News, 2007, Copyright

May 16, 2007

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today largely vindicated Google Inc. and Amazon in a copyright infringement case brought over thumbnail-sized photos that appear in their search engines. The Court's conclusion exonerates Google's and Amazon's search services, which crawl the entire World Wide Web and index it unless site owners give the search engines clear instructions otherwise.

CCIA filed an amicus brief in support of Google and Amazon in Perfect 10 v. Amazon along with other tech. trade associations.

“This opinion is important because it gives lie to the idea that legitimate search engines are somehow designed to infringe copyrights,” CCIA President and CEO Ed Black said. “The Court today recognized the vital importance of search engines to a high tech economy and the whole of society.”

This ruling assures the continued survival of the critically important search-engine business. Since search engines cannot distinguish between infringing and non infringing images, Perfect 10’s stance envisioned a World Wide Web that would have been far more difficult to use than it is today.

The ruling buttresses the crucially important doctrine of fair use, which gives ordinary people and companies the ability to use limited portions of copyrighted materials free of charge for research, commentary, journalism and personal use. The freedom to communicate, in particular the freedom to free expression online, depends on the preservation of fair use.

Although a victory on its face, the ruling will also send key portions of this case back to District Court for fact finding.

“The court vindicated fair use today by examining that doctrine in light of new circumstances and new technology such as search engines and browser caching,” CCIA Senior Counsel Matthew Schruers said. “Today’s decision is a victory for reasonable copyright. While the Ninth Circuit remanded the case for additional fact-finding, we’re confident the search engines will prevail.”