June 10, 2014
Today the Second Circuit of the US Court of Appeals upheld critical points of decision issued by Judge Howard Baer, Jr. in Author's Guild et al. vs HathiTrust et al., finding that digitization for full-text search and access for print-disabled readers is fair use under US law.
HathiTrust has to an unprecedented degree expanded access to the collections of our partner libraries, making them accessible in new ways to researchers and readers around the world. We are especially proud of our services to provide access for print-disabled persons. We would like to extend a special thanks to the many researchers, legal scholars, libraries, and other individuals and organizations for their continued support and use of HathiTrust. Although the court returned one matter to the lower court, we are very happy with today's ruling and feel confident that future decisions will continue to uphold the work that we do.