A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that held that Google Inc. did not infringe on the copyrights of books excerpted on the popular Google Books site.  In The Authors Guild, et al. v. Google Inc., Docket No. 13-4829-cv (2d Cir. Oct. 16, 2015) U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the trial court's finding that Google's copying of entire books was not copyright infringement, because only excerpts and "snippets" of the books were available to the general public through the site.

Google Books allows users to find books containing selected phrases and allows them to view a limited amount of material containing their search terms. Hundreds of thousands of books that are currently in the public domain (because their copyrights have expired or been released) are available in their entirety for reading and downloading.  The court held that although Google scanned the entirety of copyrighted books into their database, their usage was sufficiently transformative as to be fair use under federal copyright law:

Google’s making of a digital copy to provide a search function is a transformative use, which augments public knowledge by making available information about Plaintiffs’ books without providing the public with a substantial substitute for matter protected by the Plaintiffs’ copyright interests in the original works or derivatives of them. The same is true, at least under present conditions, of Google’s provision of the snippet function. Plaintiffs’ contention that Google has usurped their opportunity to access paid and unpaid licensing markets for substantially the same functions that Google provides fails, in part because the licensing markets in fact involve very different functions than those that Google provides, and in part because an author’s derivative rights do not include an exclusive right to supply information (of the sort provided by Google) about her works. Google’s profit motivation does not in these circumstances justify denial of fair use. Google’s program does not, at this time and on the record before us, expose Plaintiffs to an unreasonable risk of loss of copyright value through incursions of hackers. Finally, Google’s provision of digital copies to participating libraries, authorizing them to make non-infringing uses, is non-infringing, and the mere speculative possibility that the libraries might allow use of their copies in an infringing manner does not make Google a contributory infringer. Plaintiffs have failed to show a material issue of fact in dispute.

Id. at 4.  A finding in favor of the Plaintiffs-Appellants could have permanently shut down Google Books or seriously compromised its functionality.  Plaintiffs-Appellants have indicated that they will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.