What value as legal precedents will the two current cases have?
Trost: Both Kelly and Perfect 10 – the two most relevant cases so far – were decided by the Ninth Circuit and a California federal district court within the Ninth Circuit. But the current authors’ and publishers’ lawsuits seeking to halt Google’s Print Library Project were filed in the Southern District of New York, which isn’t bound by California courts’ interpretations. Any appeals in the authors’ and publishers’ lawsuits would go before the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. If the Second Circuit views these issues differently from the Ninth Circuit, the split rulings could even make this a powerful topic for US Supreme Court review. Q: What message should other companies take from the current lawsuits regarding copyright problems? Trost: Copyright law exists both to promote creativity in authors and also to confer the general benefits of their work upon the public. But there’s been some difficulty in balancing these competing interests in circumstances involving new techno
