A federal appeals court Wednesday cleared Google Inc. to resume posting tiny versions of nude photos by a Beverly Hills-based adult publisher.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals undid a preliminary injunction, issued last year by a Los Angeles District Court, that had kept the Web search giant from displaying thumbnail-size photographs of images owned by Perfect 10 Inc. that other sites had improperly posted.
Saying the District Court erred, the San Francisco-based appeals court ruled that Google could legally display those images under the fair use doctrine of copyright law. The doctrine allows use of copyrighted work under some conditions, such as for parody or education.
But the three-judge panel handed Google a mixed victory. It sent the case back to the District Court to determine whether Google was indirectly liable for damages because it linked to websites that displayed Perfect 10's copyrighted images without permission.
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., is fighting legal battles on a number of fronts over how it indexes and displays copyrighted material, including photos, books and TV shows.
"We are delighted that the court affirmed long-standing principles of fair use, holding that Google's image search is highly transformative by creating new value for consumers," Google General Counsel Kent Walker said in a statement.
Amazon.com Inc. also was named a defendant by Perfect 10 because its A9 search engine points to Google's search results. The Seattle-based online retailer declined to comment on the ruling.
Dan Cooper, Perfect 10's general counsel, said the company would ultimately prove that Google was indirectly liable for copyright infringement. He cited the court's finding that, "There is no dispute that Google substantially assists websites to distribute their infringing copies to a worldwide market and assists a worldwide audience of users to access infringing materials."
Cooper said that finding "confirms what we've believed all along: that a search engine cannot knowingly facilitate access to infringing material without consequence."
Legal experts differed over what the ruling might signal for Google's legal battle with Viacom Inc. over clips of TV shows posted on Google's YouTube video service.
