Googles Wins Copyright Appeal

A federal court ruled in favor of Google in its appeal of a U.S. copyright lawsuit over the display of thumbnail images of nude photographs.

Perfect 10, an adult publishing company, sued Google in 2004 for displaying miniature pictures of nude photographs in search results, The Washington Post said Thursday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled that the thumbnails have a function different from that of the original photos.

We conclude that the significantly transformative nature of Google’s search engine, particularly in light of its public benefit, outweighs Google’s superseding and commercial uses of the thumbnails in this case, Judge Sandra S. Ikuta wrote.

The newspaper said Google recently lost a copyright lawsuit by Belgian newspapers to remove their headlines and links from the Google News service.