Catalogs.google.com and copyright

Google has launched a new service that's kind of nifty. It is a searchable index of product catalogs. This isn't some fancy XML-based multi-vendor integration into a mall; it's a database of scanned paper catalogs.

You can search for specific products across all the catalog vendors, or you can browse the collection by subject area. The "hits" are scanned page images with search terms highlighted. Pretty impressive stuff.

These include many major vendors, such as Crate and Barrel, Williams-. Sonoma, Crutchfield, Cabela's, Eddie Bauer, etc. One irony is that this puts a vendor with a pure Web-based catalog at a disadvantage compared to those who still mail trees to people's houses.

I did some sample searches. Searches for digital cameras, XM radio, entertainment centers, and Gore Tex all went well.

Google does not say on their Web site how they got permission to host these hundreds of catalogs. Perhaps they did seek and receive permission. Here is the list of catalogs so far:

http://catalogs.google.com/catalog_list

So here is my academic query: if someone were to build such a Web-based index of scanned page images from paper product catalogs, and if one did not have explicit permission from a given catalog to do same, would one not be infringing the catalog publisher's copyright?

/rich Received on Wed Dec 19 2001 - 16:31:41 GMT