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11 SMU Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 77 (2007-2008)
Searching for Answers in a Digital World: How Field v. Google Could Affect Fair Use Analysis in the Internet Age

handle is hein.journals/comlrtj11 and id is 79 raw text is: Searching for Answers in a Digital World: How Field v. Google Could Affect Fair Use Analysis in the Internet Age David Cook* I. INTRODUCTION It is hard to believe that just fifteen or twenty years ago, most people did not even own a computer, much less use the Internet on a daily basis. Today, the Internet touches every facet of life. With the rise of the vast wealth of information available on the Internet, there is a need for an efficient way to find and use that information. Companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others have rushed to fill that need through their popular search engines. As these new areas of technology develop, legal and policy issues also emerge - especially in the area of intellectual property law. On the one side, it is clear that society increasingly demands more efficient and effective ways to harness the power of the Internet. On the other side many artists, writers, and inventors argue that this new technology is trampling upon their intellec- tual property rights. This case note will focus on the potential impact that a new federal district court case, Field v. Google,' is likely to have in this emerging area of Internet intellectual property law. This note argues that the court correctly decided the issue and that its analysis of implied licenses and the transform- ative nature of search engines will likely open the way for the growth of not only search engines, but also major initiatives such as the Google Library Project. II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND Field v. Google involved an attorney/poet who claimed that Google's cached copies of his poetry website constituted copyright infringement of his exclusive property rights in the poetry.2,3 In an effort to manufacture a claim against Google, Field created a website of his poetry which was free and open to the public, then deliberately set the technical parameters for his site to allow Google's search engine to index and make a cached copy of J.D. Candidate, Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, 2008; B.A. in Political Science, Baylor University, 2005. 1 would like to thank my wife, Nicole Cook, who has always supported me throughout my law school career and helped a great deal in editing this case note. Likewise, I would like to thank the entire SMU Science and Technology Law Review staff for their help and support. 1. Field v. Google, 412 F. Supp. 2d 1106 (D. Nev. 2006). 2. Id. at 1110. 3. A cached copy of a website is essentially a digital snapshot of that website at a particular moment in time. See Google Webmaster Help Center-Remove cached pages, http://www.google.con/remove.htm.

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