Google Vs. Viacom – Federal Judge Rules 50-50

The ongoing legal battle between Google and Viacom over YouTube has resulted in a 50-50 situation for Google. The bad side of the deal for Google is that it has, as per the order of a federal judge, to turn over all YouTube user histories to Viacom; the good side is its search code and IP is safe.

In a 25-page ruling Wednesday in New York, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ordered Google to hand over all user histories at YouTube to Google, quite a task considering Google says this figure could run into millions given the popularity of the website.

Judge Stanton, however, also said Google did not have to hand over the search code to Viacom as the latter had not been able to come up with a good enough reason as to why Google should do this during the course of the trial. What this means that Google’s trade secrets are essentially safe.

In his ruling, Judge Stanton said, “The search code is the product of over a thousand person-years of work. There is no dispute that its secrecy is of enormous commercial value. Someone with access to it could readily perceive its basic design principles, and cause catastrophic competitive harm to Google.”

That was not all; in his ruling Judge Stanton also said Viacom did not have the right to know any of the details pertaining to Google’s ad platform.

Viacom had first slapped the lawsuit on Google in March 2007, claiming that YouTube, the video-sharing site that Google owns, benefited from the display of pirated clips.

It was not like the two companies refused to try for a settlement; they had in fact commenced talks to resolve the issue, talks that broke down some time towards the beginning of 2007.

A month before filing the lawsuit, Viacom had asked over 100,000 videos to be removed from YouTube. These videos included bits from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report.

Google’s stance has been for the dismissal of the case on the grounds that it was protected from any liability so long as it deletes clips that infringe copyrights by request. It had cited the safe harbor provisions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal law, in its defense.

However, the provisions under the act stand annulled in the event a website is found to have benefited directly because of piracy. This is where Viacom’s argument aims at – in its case it said YouTube benefited from piracy as it developed its business by bringing users using clips that had been copyrighted.