Google asked a federal court to dismiss copyright claims against its Google Books project by groups representing authors and photographers on Thursday, saying the groups could not sue over copyrights they did not own.
Google’s motion seeks to remove The Authors Guild and the ASMP from the lawsuits. They don’t have legal standing to sue over the copyrights because they aren’t copyright holders but merely represent them, Google argued in its brief supporting the motion.
“The associations are not proper parties to this copyright infringement case because they themselves do not claim to own any copyright at issue,” Google wrote in the brief to Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Manhattan.
Google had told Judge Chin it planned to file motions for dismissal, and the judge had set Friday as a deadline. Google did not file a similar motion to dismiss the lawsuit by the Association of American Publishers. The company is believed to be closer to reaching a settlement with the plaintiffs in that case.
Google launched the library scanning project in 2004. One copyright settlement was already reached in 2008, but Judge Chin rejected that agreement in March.
The plaintiffs will have until January 23 to respond to the motions filed Thursday, and Google will then have until February 3 to respond to their opposition.
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen’s e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com