Second Circuit Affirms Fair Use in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust

On June 10, 2014, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the lower court decision in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust in favor of HathiTrust Digital Library’s (HDL) motions for summary judgment, finding that two of the three uses by HDL (creating a full-text search database and providing access to the print disabled) constituted fair use and remanding the issue of the third use (preservation) back to the district court to determine the standing of the plaintiffs to bring the claim.

The Second Circuit began its fair use analysis by noting that while the Copyright Act certain exclusive rights, “there are important limits to an author’s rights to control original and derivative works. One such limit is the doctrine of ‘fair use,’ which allows the public to draw upon copyrighted materials without the permission of the copyright holder in certain circumstances.” The court then detailed numerous examples of fair use that have been upheld by various courts, including district courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court of the United States before going through the three HDL uses at issue.

Fair Use Factors

The Second Circuit summarized the four fair use factors codified under Section 107 of the Copyright Act and explained how these factors are evaluated. These factors include:

1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

With respect to the first factor, the court noted the importance of whether the use is considered “transformative” which it defines as “something more than repackage[ing] or republish[ing] the original copyrighted work. The inquiry is whether the work ‘adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message …’” (quoting Campbell, 510 U.S. 16 579)). The Second Circuit rejected the district court’s implication that a use is transformative if it adds value or utility, instead emphasizing that a transformative work is “one that serves a new and different function from the original work and is not a substitute for it.”

The court noted that the second factor evaluates the nature of the work and recognizes a greater need to disseminate factual works than fiction.

The third factor addresses the amount of the copyrighted work used and the court noted, “we assess the quantity and value of the materials used and whether the amount copied is reasonable in relation to the purported justification for the use.”

Finally, citing the Supreme Court case, Harper v. Row, the Second Circuit called the fourth factor, which assesses the impact of the use on the potential market, the “single most important element of fair use.” The court noted that “[t]o defeat a claim of fair use, the copyright holder must point to market harm that results because the secondary use serves as a substitute for the original work.”

Full Text Search

The court first evaluated whether HDL’s full text search constitutes fair use. The court explains the program, noting that the Libraries create digital copies of the entire books, but HDL does not allow viewers to view any portion of the books searched, but only to identify where a search term appears in a particular book. In evaluating the four fair use factors, the court concluded that three of the four factors favor fair use and upheld the district court’s determination that the full-text search constitutes fair use.

The Second Circuit found that the full-text search is a “quintessentially transformative use” as it is “different in purpose, character, expression, meaning, and message from the page (and the book) from which it is drawn.” The court further noted that the full-text search is more transformative than other uses previously upheld as fair use by the Second Circuit as well as other circuits.

With respect to the second factor, the court did not find it to be dispositive, noting that this factor may be limited in value where a creative work is being used for a transformative purpose.

Turning to the third factor, the Second Circuit pointed to precedent that copying a work in its entirety is sometimes necessary. It found that it was “reasonably necessary” for HDL to copy the entirety of the work in order to enable the full-text search function. Accordingly, this factor weighed in favor of HDL.

Discussing the fourth factor, the Second Circuit reminded that the analysis “is concerned with only one type of economic injury to a copyright holder: