Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust

Summary

The court addressed challenges to HathiTrust’s mass digitization project, including associational and statutory standing, ripeness of the Orphan Works Project, and the availability of fair use under the Copyright Act. It held that domestic associational plaintiffs lacked statutory standing to enforce members’ copyrights, claims concerning the future Orphan Works Project were unripe, and granted defendants’ and intervenors’ motions for summary judgment while denying plaintiffs’ motion.

Holdings

1. The associational plaintiffs satisfied Article III standing and the prudential third prong of the Hunt associational-standing test.
2. The domestic associational plaintiffs lacked statutory standing to enforce their members’ copyright claims because 17 U.S.C. § 501(b) limits copyright infringement actions to the legal or beneficial owner of the exclusive right at issue.
3. The court declined to dismiss the foreign associational plaintiffs for lack of statutory standing because the parties had inadequately presented and argued the relevant foreign-law issues.
4. The claims concerning the future Orphan Works Project were not ripe for adjudication.
5. Section 107 fair use remains available to libraries as a defense even when the copying does not fall within the specific library-copying provisions of Section 108.
6. The defendants’ mass digitization, full-text searching, preservation, and access for print-disabled individuals were protected by fair use on the undisputed facts.
7. The University of Michigan qualified as an authorized entity under 17 U.S.C. § 121, and providing eligible print-disabled users access to previously published nondramatic literary works through the HathiTrust Digital Library fit within the Chafee Amendment.

Questions Presented

1. Whether associational plaintiffs satisfied Article III and prudential associational-standing requirements.
2. Whether domestic associational plaintiffs had statutory standing under 17 U.S.C. § 501(b) to assert copyright claims belonging to their members.
3. Whether foreign associational plaintiffs’ statutory standing should be rejected on the record presented.
4. Whether claims concerning the contemplated Orphan Works Project were ripe for adjudication.
5. Whether Section 107 fair use was unavailable as a defense because the library-copying provisions of Section 108 governed the defendants’ conduct.
6. Whether defendants’ mass digitization, preservation, full-text search, and print-disability-access uses constituted fair use as a matter of law.
7. Whether the University of Michigan qualified as an authorized entity under the Chafee Amendment and whether its provision of accessible copies fell within 17 U.S.C. § 121.

Disposition

other