In a lawsuit brought by Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill, Macmillan Learning, and Elsevier against Google, Judge Jennifer L. Rochon dismissed the plaintiff’s claims that the tech giant engaged in vicarious copyright infringement due to the use of Google Shopping to sell pirated digital textbooks. “Google exercises no control over the infringing Pirate Sellers’ third-party websites, where the actual alleged infringement takes place,” the opinion states. It continues, “The fact that ‘search engines [can] effectively cause a website to disappear by removing it from their search results’ is not enough to give rise to vicarious liability.” The judge, however, allowed one […]
