9th Circuit finds thumbnails to be fair use

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the display of "thumbnail" versions of copyrighted photographs by Google's image search engine constitutes fair use under the Copyright Act (read NLJ's full story).

The court ruled that Google infringed on a password-protected porn site's rights by displaying the thumbnails. But deemed the thumbnails fair use because they served a different purpose than the full size images that benefited the public, reversing on the decision by California's Central District court.

But they also found out that Google may be contributorily liable for "framing" third-party Web sites containing unauthorized full-size Perfect 10 images.
 
Read the legal documents of the case