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Another chapter in the battle for book search dominance was written last week as Google issued additional subpoenas to other major book search players in a bid for information the company believes could be used in its future legal battles. According to published reports this week by Bloomberg, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company filed paper on Oct. 5 in U.S. District Court to seek information from Amazon.com, Microsoft and Yahoo about each of the rival book searches for future use in several lawsuits Google faces. The world’s largest online retailer (Amazon), largest software producer (Microsoft) and most-popular U.S. Web site (Yahoo) have all announced or

The company behind the most-used search engine in the world continued its endeavor to scan library collections from around the word by expanding its book-scanning project to Spain this week. Google announced Tuesday its new partnership with the University Complutense of Madrid in its Google Books Library Project, an effort to digitize hundreds of thousands of book in the university’s library collection, the largest library in that country. The Spanish institution joins Harvard, New York Public Library, Oxford, Stanford, University of Michigan and University of California in the project the company started two years ago. “Out-of-copyright books previously only available to people with access to Madrid’s

After nearly two years of debate and speculation, the world’s top search engine site has launched its much-talked about and highly controversial book search. Google finally rolled out its Book Search on August 30 despite the protests of many in the book industry, who have raised issue with the search’s display of portions of copyright-protected works without prior approval since the concept was introduced in October 2004. The Mountain View,Calif-based company contends the search constitutes fair use and offers publishers the opportunity to request how and if their content will be used. According to Google, the company does “not enable downloading of any books under copyright.

Google’s controversial campaign to scan and digitalize library collections for online viewing on its Internet search engine continues to raise objections and claims of piracy from the publishing world. According to the Agence France-Presse news agency, another publishing group--this time French publisher La Martiniere--filed suit Tuesday against the Internet giant for indexing the company’s titles without first obtaining permission. La Martiniere, owner of France’s Le Seuil, Switzerland’s Delachaux and Niestle, and the United States’ Harry N. Abrams, contends that even if the company is only showing portions of a work online, it still constitutes an infringement of copyright. More than 100 La Martiniere books have

“Wide open and full of potential” is how Anne Landa, rights and exports manager for Sourcebooks Inc., characterizes the market for licensing international rights. “It is simply about placing the right books with the right people and seeing the whole thing through,” Landa—who works out of her home office in San Diego, Calif.—says about selling licensing rights to publishers around the globe for Sourcebooks. International licensing rights increased 20 percent last year at the Naperville, Ill.-based publisher. Sourcebooks, an independent publisher of more than 900 trade titles, has had books translated into 36 languages and published in 34 countries. Landa says she expects the upward