This paper analyse the rights management for the two sub-projects which compose the Google Books Search project : Partner Program (publishers) and Google Library Project (libraries).Whereas full view and reading of public domain books is not particularly problematic, the possibility for any user to search into copyrighted books digitized for this purpose led authors and publishers to a promote a class action in the fall of 2005, settled on October 28th 2008 with the so called Google Book Settlement.The Settlement identifies 4 types of Partners Libraries based on their active level of partecipation to the transaction: Fully Participating Libraries, Cooperating Libraries, Public Domain Libraries and Others Libraries. The books, digitized by Google and provided by the 4 possible types of Libraries, had reached the 7 million number in November 2008. Regarding legal aspects, they can be classified in three categories: not commercially-available in-copyright books comprehensive also of orphan works (5 million ca. = 70%), public domain books (1.4 million ca. = 20%), commercially-available in-copyright (700'000 ca. =10%).The article analyzes the transaction Settlement in the view of a possible transposition of the model in a European copyright normative context, investigating terms and innovation aspects such as the creation of an indipendent Books Rights Registry and the settlement of a research center displaced in two different locations (besides Google) chosen by the libraries; this database will include all the digital copies linked to the Google Library Project.
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