In a brief five-page ruling, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Judge Denny Chin’s June 2012 certification of the Authors Guild as a class in the long-running Google Books lawsuit, which itself was a repeat of the original 2005 class certification. The appeals court concluded that class certification “was premature in the absence of a determination by the District Court of the merits of Google’s ‘fair use’ defense.” They also opined that “Google’s claim that plaintiffs are not representative of the certified class” is “an argument which, in our view, may carry some force.” So the actual issues of […]