Lawyers Struggle to Define Fair Use in Wake of Google Books Case

When federal judge Denny Chin declared last fall that Google's decision to scan 20 million books did not violate copyright law, the ruling came as a new high water mark for "transformative use" - the idea, loosely defined, that it's okay to use someone else's creative work if the new work is different enough from the original.

"Google's use of the copyrighted works is highly transformative," wrote Chin in a signature passage of a ruling that used the word "transformative" more than a dozen times.