Google and Authors Guild return to court for fair use showdown

It’s been almost four years since Google and the Authors Guild asked US District Judge Denny Chin to approve a massive copyright settlement that would have cleared the way for distributing more than 20 million books Google scanned at libraries around the world.

On Monday, the parties return before Judge Chin, but this time as adversaries to argue a very different topic: whether the book scanning can count as a “fair use” that allows Google to avoid the permissions and penalties set out in copyright law.

The dispute dates from 2005, when the Authors Guild first filed a class action against Google, but only heated up again after the big settlement failed and the Guild sued the search giant anew in late 2011. This summer, momentum shifted to Google after a unanimous appeals court panel reversed Chin’s decision to certify the class action and told him instead to…