No. 15-849 IN THE Supreme Court of the United States THE AUTHORS GUILD, et al., Petitioners, v. GOOGLE INC., Respondent. ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT BRIEF IN OPPOSITION ALLISON TRZOP SETH P. WAXMAN WILMER CUTLER PICKERING Counsel of Record HALE AND DORR LLP LOUIS R. COHEN 60 State Street PAUL R.Q. WOLFSON Boston, MA 02109 DANIEL P. KEARNEY, JR. BETH C. NEITZEL* DARALYN J. DURIE WILMER CUTLER PICKERING JOSEPH C. GRATZ HALE AND DORR LLP DURIE TANGRI LLP 1875 Pennsylvania Ave., NW 217 Leidesdorff Street Washington, DC 20006 San Francisco, CA 94111 (202) 663-6000 [email protected] QUESTION PRESENTED Google Books gives readers a dramatically new way to find books located in major research libraries. Using text searches they formulate themselves, read- ers can identify, determine the relevance of, and locate books they might otherwise never have found. The question presented is whether the court of ap- peals properly concluded, based on its examination of the facts of this case in light of the statutory “fair use” factors set forth at 17 U.S.C. § 107, that Google Books constitutes fair use of petitioners’ copyrighted works. (i) CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT Google Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a publicly traded company. No other company owns 10% or more of Google’s stock. (ii) TABLE OF CONTENTS Page QUESTION PRESENTED ............................................... i CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT ............. ii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES .......................................... iv INTRODUCTION .............................................................. 1 STATEMENT ..................................................................... 4 A. The Google Books Project ................................... 4 B. Proceedings Below .............................................. 10 ARGUMENT ..................................................................... 14 I. THE COURT OF APPEALS PROPERLY CON- SIDERED EACH OF THE STATUTORY FAIR USE FACTORS AND REACHED THE COR- RECT RESULT ON THE FACTS OF THIS CASE ............................................................................. 14 II. THE DECISION BELOW DOES NOT CON- FLICT WITH OTHER CIRCUITS’ APPLICA- TION OF THE FIRST FAIR-USE FACTOR .................. 23 III. THE SECOND CIRCUIT’S DECISION AS TO THE LIBRARY COPIES DOES NOT CONFLICT WITH SIXTH CIRCUIT PRECEDENT .......................... 29 IV. ASSOCIATIONAL STANDING IS IRRELEVANT HERE ............................................................................ 32 CONCLUSION ................................................................. 33 (iii) iv TABLE OF AUTHORITIES CASES Page(s) A.V. ex rel. Vanderhye v. iParadigms, LLC, 562 F.3d 630 (4th Cir. 2009) ...................... 3, 25, 26, 28 American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2498 (2014) .................................................. 30, 31 Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust, 755 F.3d 87 (2d Cir. 2014) ................................................... 10, 16, 32 Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986) ........................... 33 Cambridge University Press v. Patton, 769 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. 2014) ................................... 27, 28 Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994) ............................................................ passim Cariou v. Prince, 714 F.3d 694 (2d Cir. 2013) ............... 28 Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) ........................ 12, 21 Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003) .................................................................. 3, 25 Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation LLC, 766 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2014) ........................................................ 28, 29 Nunez v. Caribbean International News Corp., 235 F.3d 18 (1st Cir. 2000) ......................................... 24 Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 (9th Cir. 2007) ........................................... 3, 25, 28 Princeton University Press v. Michigan Document Services, Inc., 99 F.3d 1381 (6th Cir. 1996) .......................................................... 27, 30, 31 v TABLE OF AUTHORITIES—Continued Page(s) Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) ................. 17, 18, 24 Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207 (1990) ............................ 19 Video Pipeline, Inc. v. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., 342 F.3d 191 (3d Cir. 2003) ............................................................................. 26 DOCKETED CASES American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo, Inc., No. 13-461 (U.S. Apr. 22, 2014) ................................. 23 CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS AND STATUTES U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8, cl. 8 ............................................... 17 17 U.S.C. § 101 .............................................................................. 30 § 106 ........................................................................ 20, 30 § 107 ........................................................ 1, 11, 15, 22, 24 § 108 .............................................................................. 32 § 121 ........................................................................ 10, 32 IN THE Supreme Court of the United States No. 15-849 THE AUTHORS GUILD, et al., Petitioners, v. GOOGLE INC., Respondent. ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT BRIEF IN OPPOSITION INTRODUCTION In a carefully reasoned decision that closely exam- ined the facts of this case in light of the statutory “fair use” factors set forth at 17 U.S.C. § 107, the Second Circuit concluded that Google Books constitutes fair use and thus does not infringe petitioners’ copyrights. That decision follows this Court’s instructions, is cor- rect, and does not conflict with any decision of this Court or any other court of appeals. It therefore does not warrant this Court’s review. As Judge Leval’s opinion demonstrates persuasively, Google Books is en- tirely consistent with the purposes of copyright law and in fact advances the interests of authors. 2 Google Books gives readers a dramatically new way to find books of interest. By formulating their own text queries and reviewing search results, users can identify, determine the relevance of, and locate books they might otherwise never have found. In response to a search query, Google Books provides the user with a list of books that contain the chosen search term and (in many cases) information about the immediate context in which the term appears. Google Books also informs the user where he or she can buy or borrow the book. Google Books is thus, as the Second Circuit concluded, quintes- sentially transformative in nature: It provides new and valuable information that users do not otherwise have. Google Books does not supersede the books them- selves or replace buying or borrowing them. It does not significantly affect the market for books or their protected derivatives (except to boost the market by helping readers find them, see Pet. App. 76a). As Judge Leval’s careful examination of the factual record demonstrates, Google Books has been designed to pre- vent users from reading any substantial portion of any book. To read a book, users must obtain the book else- where—by buying it from a bookseller or borrowing it from a library; Google Books simply enables users to find the books they want to read. And although peti- tioners claimed that Google Books preempted a licens- ing market for similar digital search tools, the Second Circuit correctly concluded that copyright law does not recognize any exclusive right to furnish information about a work; a copyright does not protect its holder against the listing of a work in either a traditional card catalog or in this vastly superior new form of search tool. In any event, there was no evidence of an exist- ing, or likely future, licensing market for such a pur- ported derivative use. Id. 45a-46a. 3 Contrary to petitioners’ caricature of the decision below, Judge Leval carefully and separately weighed each factor in the fair use analysis and assessed Google Books “in light of the purposes of copyright,” as articu- lated by this Court’s decisions, Pet. App. 17a (quoting Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 578 (1994)). Petitioners’ attempt to manufacture a circuit split with respect to the first fair-use factor is without merit; no court of appeals has required “creative” ex- pression (Pet. 19) distinct from the dramatically new kind of information provided to users of Google Books. To the contrary, the decision below follows the ap- proach of other circuits that found similar uses to be fair use. See A.V. ex rel. Vanderhye v. iParadigms, LLC, 562 F.3d 630, 645 (4th Cir. 2009); Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146, 1168 (9th Cir. 2007); Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., 336 F.3d 811, 822 (9th Cir. 2003). Nor is there any error or circuit conflict in the court of appeals’ conclusion that there was no infringe- ment in the digital scans provided by Google to the li- braries that owned the books. Google provided a digi- tal scan of a book only to the library that owned the book from which the scan was made, and Google re- quired the library to use the digital scans only for their own non-infringing activities. There is no evidence that the libraries are violating those terms. Given the soundness of the Second Circuit’s deci- sion and the absence of any circuit conflict, there is no warrant