Court: Searchable books database is 'fair use'

A New York federal appeals court says the creation of a full-text searchable database of millions of books is a fair use of copyrighted works.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. The case was brought after several research universities agreed to let Google electronically scan their books. Those schools included the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell University and the University of Indiana.

Authors and several authors' groups sued after 13 universities in 2008 announced plans to create a repository for the digital copies. The repository has more than 10 million books.

The appeals court also said the copyrighted works can be provided in formats accessible to people with disabilities.