Aug 11 (Reuters) - The Internet Archive and a group of leading book publishers told a Manhattan federal court on Friday that they have resolved aspects of their legal battle over the Archive’s digital lending of their scanned books.
If accepted, the consent judgment would settle questions over potential money damages in the case and the scope of a ban on the Archive’s lending and would clear the way for the Archive to appeal U.S. District Judge John Koeltl’s decision that it infringed the publishers’ copyrights.
The proposed order would require the Archive to pay Lagardere SCA’s (LAGA.PA) Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s (NWSA.O) HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons (WLY.N) and Bertelsmann SE & Co’s (BTGGg.F) Penguin Random House an undisclosed amount of money if it loses its appeal.
The order would also permanently block the Archive from lending out copies of the publishers’ books without permission, pending the result of the appeal.
The Internet Archive said in a blog post that the fight was “far from over,” and founder Brewster Kahle said in a statement that “we must have strong libraries, which is why we are appealing this decision.”
The publishers sued in 2020 over the Archive’s free lending of scanned copies of their print books, which began after libraries closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.