On Wednesday, the USA Supreme Court upheld a 1994 law granting copyright protection to a large number of foreign works that had been freely available in the public domain including books by J.R.R. Tolkien and George Orwell.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google had hoped that the high court would overturn the law: "Google Inc. was the leading company challenging the law, in an echo of the separate battle in Washington over an Internet piracy bill that pits Google against movie studios. The search company...said in court papers that the restored copyrights could affect more than a million books it has scanned through its Google Books Library Project."
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google had hoped that the high court would overturn the law: "Google Inc. was the leading company challenging the law, in an echo of the separate battle in Washington over an Internet piracy bill that pits Google against movie studios. The search company...said in court papers that the restored copyrights could affect more than a million books it has scanned through its Google Books Library Project."