The Second Circuit on Tuesday said Google Inc. could file an appeal challenging a judge’s decision granting class certification to thousands of authors who claim Google Inc.’s plan to digitize millions of books violates U.S. copyright law. In a short notice, the appeals court granted Google’s motion for leave to file an appeal of U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin’s May 31 decision, which rejected the search giant’s argument that the writers should have litigated their copyright claims individually.
Class Actions Blog
Posts Tagged ‘Google’
Second Circuit allows Google to appeal class certification in author’s case
Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft sued over digital music copyright violations
A class action complaint filed in New York alleges that the sellers of “almost all the downloaded music in the United States,” including Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, “accept and sell unlicensed music” from “music aggregators,” cheating thousands of artists of royalties. Norman Blagman, a songwriter, sued the four defendants named above, plus eMusic.com and Orchard Enterprises, alleging “massive and systematic” copyright violations. Read more…
Google faces class action over stock reclassification
A shareholder has filed a class action against Google arising out of Google’s recent announcement that it would do a stock split. The complaint alleges that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are cementing their hold on the company through a 2-for-1 stock split that creates a non-voting class of stock that will “preserve their voting power into perpetuity.” Google’s stock reclassification proposal gives public shareholders a dividend of non-voting Class C stock for every share of Class A stock they own.
Messrs. Page and Brin, who founded Google in 1998, control the company through ownership of most of Google’s Class B stock, which has 10 times the voting power of the public shares. They also will receive the 2-for-1 stock split, according to the complaint. Read more…
