#jason schultz

Several legal scholars have already commented on the specifics of the ruling, so I won’t repeat their observations here, but this decision has several important implications for the future of technological innovation and the future of digital media:

1. Judges continue to recognize the importance of search for digital media.

As we continue to create and collect more and more digital media, the importance of search increases. It’s no longer feasible to simple store our digital photos, songs, books, or papers in a folder and find them later. Whether the collection is individual, family, educational, or commercial, the highly transformative power of digitizing, indexing, and searching through digital records (including copyrighted works) has become of paramount importance to society. Judge Chin’s ruling is the latest in a long line of cases recognizing this and has solidified the legality of this practice.

2. Copyright owners can’t just cry wolf when someone digitizes their works.

In the past, courts were often sympathetic to copyright owners who sued over digitizing of their works without permission, even if there were other benefits to doing so. For example, in UMG Recordings v. MP3.com, Inc., the court ruled that an online service infringed music copyrights by pre-loading CDs onto its servers to provide streaming access to users who owned the same CDs at home. Despite the societal benefits of the new service (including huge efficiencies for consumers and even a potential increase in music sales for copyright owners), the court assumed that any unauthorized copying was detrimental to the copyright system and therefore had to be illegal.

Judge Chin’s ruling, on the other hand, takes an almost entirely different tack. Rather than eschew technological advances that promote convenience, efficiency, and greater access to copyrighted works, Chin embraces them in his opinion. He appropriately recognizes that fair use, as much as the exclusive rights of a copyright owner, plays a critical role in our copyright system: “to fulfill copyright’s very purpose, ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’” By holding that Google Books advanced the progress of the arts and sciences without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders, Chin is sending a signal to the copyright owner community that simply claiming copying of your works won’t be enough, especially when those copies are serving important public needs.

Schultz graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in 2000, where he managed the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and interned for Senior District Judge Ronald Whyte of the Northern District of California. He then clerked for U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen in Oakland, California before working as an associate for the California offices of Fish & Richardson, P.C. litigating trade secret, patent, copyright and trademark cases for a wide variety of high-tech clients. From 2003 to 2007, Schultz was a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), one of the leading digital rights groups in the world. There he handled numerous high-profile intellectual property and technology matters affecting the public's interests in free expression, fair use, and innovation with an emphasis on issues of copyright law, reverse engineering, digital rights management, and patent law reform. During his time at EFF, he also taught cyberlaw and intellectual property courses as an adjunct lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Law School and the School of Information.