Judge Throws Out Class-Action Status for Google Books Lawsuit

Authors Guild wants company to pay for each book they've scanned in

A federal appeals court on Monday said a lawsuit against Google Inc's effort to create the world's largest digital books library should not have been allowed to proceed as a class action.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said Circuit Judge Denny Chin erred in prematurely certifying a class of potentially hundreds of thousands of authors, saying he should have first determined the merits of Google's "fair use" defense.

Billions of dollars are at stake in the eight-year-old lawsuit. Google has already scanned more than 20 million books, and the Authors Guild, a group representing authors, has said Google should pay $750 for each book copied.