A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled on Friday that portions of Google's image search likely violate U.S. law, saying the adult-oriented Perfect 10 website was able to show that "by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs" Google probably infringes copyright law, writes Silicon.com. U.S. District Judge A Howard Matz said he would award Perfect 10 a preliminary injunction against Google. Google said it plans to appeal, adding that the injunction would have no effect on the "vast majority" of image searches.
Perfect 10 sued Google for copyright infringement in November 2004 and asked in August 2005 for an injunction. It says copyright pirates reproduce its images on sites that Google indexes and then serves up stolen images from them as search results.
Apparently what tripped up Google's case is that it receives AdSense advertising revenue from some of the photo-pirating sites - and Google's image search has an option for mobile phones, which the court ruled harm Perfect 10's subscription-based image sales for scaled-down images via U.K.-base Fonestarz.
