On September 13, 2011 the University of Michigan, HathiTrust, and four of HathiTrust’s library partners—the University of California System, the University of Wisconsin System, Indiana University and Cornell University—were sued for alleged copyright infringement relating to digitized books.
Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors Limited, the Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ) in Canada, and eight individuals are seeking to stop further digitization and to impound current digitized copies of in-copyright works. They are also seeking to enjoin HathiTrust partners from making lawful uses of digitized orphan works through the HathiTrust.
University officials have stated that the lawsuit is both “misguided and unnecessary.”
Paul Courant on the Authors Guild lawsuit
