01 February 2009

US and European courts split over fair use

Managing Intellectual Property

Emily Kirsch and Alexander Klett explore how contradictory European and US decisions on fair use in cases involving Google thumbnails can be instructive in developing your online business

One-minute read

Applying IP law on the internet continues to be an area of confusion for courts around the globe. Google's controversial use of thumbnail images in its search results has been one famous example of this, and in recent years courts in the US and EU have weighed in on the issue. The results of these cases have not provided clarity, but understanding the outcomes and the courts' differing views of fair use can help internet companies to develop effective strategies for avoiding such litigation. As a consequence of these decisions, operators of global search engines will have to think carefully about what kinds of services to launch in which territory. They will have to give thought, particularly in Europe, to whether the partial or condensed use of third-party articles and photographs may be infringing under domestic copyright law.

In recent years, Google has been attacked in various countries for alleged violations of copyright law resulting from several features offered by its internet search engines. These matters concerned the use by Google of, among other things, photographs and other graphic elements in condensed form – so-called thumbnails – on Google News, as well as the use of such thumbnails as part of search results generated by the Google image search service.

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US and European courts split over fair use

The rest of this article is available to subscribers to Managing IP only.

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