Friday, November 20, 2009
Google Books Settlement Proceedings to Drag on Until Mid-February
The latest revision of the Google Books settlement has been granted preliminary approval by a New York district judge, though it will be some time before that approval is finalized–if it is finalized. Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District of New York said Thursday that he will hold a hearing Feb. 18 on the new agreement, which will restore access to millions of out-of-print books, but may also one day give the company a monopoly on the largest digital library in the world.
Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have submitted a new version of their digital book settlement, and while it makes concessions to the Department of Justice and others who have raised concerns about how it may violate antitrust laws, the new proposal doesn’t seem to have appeased all of its opponents.
Google’s five-year-old copyright feud with the publishing industry will drag on a few days more now that the deadline for submitting a revised settlement proposal has been pushed back once again. Google and attorneys representing the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers were supposed to file the document today, but instead asked the judge overseeing the matter to give them until the end of the week. 
Looks like the Google Books Settlement won’t be hitting the shelves until later this year–at the earliest. Days after the U.S. Justice Department criticized the deal and the forward-looking business arrangements it seeks to create as cause for “significant legal concern,” Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers requested a delay in a judge’s final “fairness hearing” scheduled for Oct. 7 so that they can amend it.
The Justice Department’s extended antitrust review of Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun apparently turned up few issues of concern. Oracle said this afternoon that regulators have approved the $7.4 billion deal with no restrictions.
Apple appears to have a particular affinity for the unwritten no-poaching agreements said to be so popular among the nation’s biggest tech companies. Earlier this summer, the New York Times reported that Apple may have quietly negotiated an agreement with Google not to hire away each other’s top talent. Now, Bloomberg claims that the company attempted to win a similar commitment from Palm, but was rebuffed.
Earlier this year, Christine Varney, the new antitrust chief at the Department of Justice, said she planned to return the DOJ to a policy that led to landmark antitrust suits like the one against Microsoft in the ’90s. And she delivered on that promise in short order. Since her confirmation in late April, the DOJ has seen a sort of Trustbuster renaissance. It has begun inquiring into potentially anticompetitive recruiting practices in Silicon Valley. It’s opened an investigation into the Google Books settlement. And now it’s scrutinizing cellphone exclusivity deals, like the lucrative one between Apple and AT&T.
To hear tell from Sun executives, the company’s impending acquisition by Oracle will be of great benefit to Sun, its technology and its customers. “Is this Oracle thing a good thing for Java?” Sun chairman Scott McNealy asked last week at the company’s JavaOne conference. “And is it a…good thing for the community, and all the rest of it?…It’s absolutely a good thing.” Thing is, this wasn’t always Sun’s opinion. In fact, the company’s touting of the benefits of the Oracle acquisition is, dare I say, a tad ironic given its preacquisition opinion of Oracle’s prices.
A couple bombshells in Sun Microsystems’s latest 10-Q filing. Seems the company believes it may have violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans bribery of foreign government officials. Oh, and some of its shareholders are suing to block its acquisition by Oracle.
Google’s gone and run afoul of the Department of Justice again. Its interest piqued by the growing outcry over the company’s proposed book-search settlement with authors and publishers, the agency has opened an inquiry. 
“Google abandoned [its deal with Yahoo] not because pressing ahead with it ‘risked’ a protracted legal battle, but because it guaranteed one.” I wrote that on Nov. 6, following the official dissolution of Google’s proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo. Turns out the guarantee to which I referred was an ironclad one. Sanford Litvack, the attorney who would have been lead counsel in the event of a government antitrust case against Google, tells American Lawyer Daily that the Department of Justice was literally hours away from suing the company when it bailed on the deal.
