A Chinese author plans to prosecute Google for scanning one of her books into the Google Books database without her permission, according to a report.
Mian Mian intends to file suit this week against Google, claiming copyright violation after discovering that her third book, "Acid Lovers," was scanned by Google as part of its book digitization project, according to AFP. The suit would be the first filed against Google in China over the Google Books project, which itself is no stranger to the courtroom.
Legal battles over Google's U.S. settlement with authors and publishers will stretch into 2010, nearly 15 months after Google first reached an concord with those groups to allow it to continue scanning out-of-print but copyright-protected works. Google is the only association with explicit permission to scan that type of book, which it has been doing since 2005 while claiming that fair-use laws permit such activity.
That agreement, however, applies only to the U.S. and a few other English-speaking countries. Reports surfaced a few months ago that Chinese authors were thinking about ganging up on Google, which is apparently in talks with legislature of those groups but has yet to reach a official agreement.
The U.S. conclusion is still on track for a February hearing to decide whether the revised settlement completed under the Department of Justice's watch should be accepted.
Earlier this month, a French court planned Google to pay 300,000 euros ($430,000) in damages and interest to French company La Martiniere, which had sued the tech giant for copyright contravention for scanning book excerpts to include in its Google Book search results.
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