Intervention by IA Denied; Deadline for Objections Extended

New York Judge Denny Chin recently issued two rulings in the Google Book Search settlement. In the first, he ' the request by the Internet Archive to intervene as a defendant in the lawsuit (and thus, presumably, be on firmer founding to guide aspects of the settlement). In his response, Judge Chin said:

The Court has received requests for pre-motion conferences by the Internet Archive, Lewis Hyde, Harry Lewis, and the Open Access Trust, Inc. seeking leave to intervene in this action. I have construed their letters as motions to intervene, and the motions are denied. The proposed interveners are, however, free to file objections to the proposed settlement or amicus briefs, either of which must be filed by the May 5, 2009 objection deadline.

(The Open Access Trust is a proposal to form a legal trust for the revenue generated by unclaimed orphan works.)

In the second, Judge Chin granted a four month extension to the deadline for class members to opt out of the settlement or file objections. The new deadline is now September 4th. Requests for the extension came from a group of authors (including heirs of Steinbeck) in an April 24th letter and a group of academic authors represented by Berkeley School of Law Professor Pamela Samuelson (who recently wrote an eloquent post about the settlement on the O'Reilly Radar blog). Attorneys in the case requested a two month extension.

In related news, the court has received and logged three letters that object to the settlement: from authors Hope Ryden and Lee Killough as well as Jenny Darling & Associates in Australia. More may come next week from those anticipating the May 5th deadline, but I expect most will continue to flow in around the new September 4th date.

Found via two articles and a tweet by Tim O'Reilly.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6654190.html on January 28th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6654845.html on January 28th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/ to http://web.archive.org/web/20081219194925/http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/ on August 22nd, 2013.