Google accused by U.S. writers of author copyright violation

A US writers' group is suing internet search engine Google, claiming that its plan to digitise major library book collections infringes author copyright.

The Authors Guild has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The lawsuit seeks class action status, seeks damages and demands an injunction against further infringements, according to BBC.

Google said it regretted the Authors Guild action, asked for more talks, and claimed its plans benefited writers.

The suit names as co-plaintiffs The Authors Guild and writers Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles and Daniel Hoffman.

Google has a grand plan of "organizing the world's information and making it more universally accessible and useful".

It hopes to pump $200m (Ј110m) into creating a digital archive of millions of books from four top US libraries - the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard universities, and of the New York Public Library - by 2015.

It is also digitising out-of-copyright books from the UK's Oxford University.