Supreme Court rejects challenge to Google’s online library

The justices let stand lower court rulings in favor of the Mountain View company and rejected the authors’ claim that the company’s digitizing of millions of books amounts to “copyright infringement on an epic scale.”

Lower courts have said that Google can provide small portions of the books to the public without violating copyright laws.

Google Inc. has made digital copies of more than 20 million books from major research libraries and established a publicly available search function.

In October, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York agreed with a judge who concluded that Google was not violating copyright laws when it showed customers small portions of the books.