Google says its plan will raise awareness and sales of books
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.
Google said it regretted the Authors Guild action, asked for more talks, and claimed its plans benefited writers.
Co-plaintiffs in Google action Authors Guild - professional group for published writers Herbert Mitgang - historian, critic, ex-New York Times writer Betty Miles - children's book author Daniel Hoffman - Poet Laureate in the US - 1973/74
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 (£110m) 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.
'Brazen violation'
However it has temporarily stopped scanning copyrighted texts until November to allay concerns about the plan, after several groups complained about copyright violation.
The action by the 86-year-old Authors Guild is part of a push by the organization to roll back efforts by Web sites to make the contents of books freely available online.
Google has said copyright holders who contact the company and ask for their books to be withheld from the project, will be respected.
Only small portions of the books are shown unless the content owner gives permission to show more
Google statement
But critics say that moves the onus from Google to the writers.
"This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law," Nick Taylor, president of the 8,000-member New York-based Authors Guild, said in a statement.
"(Authors), not Google, have the exclusive rights to... authorize such reproduction, distribution and display of their works," the guild's complaint says.
But Google said its project "directly benefits authors and publishers by increasing awareness of and sales of the books in the programme".
"Only small portions of the books are shown unless the content owner gives permission to show more," it added.
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Google is being sued by the Authors Guild, among others, due to the verbatim publishing of contents of their books in Google Print for Libraries, a search engine for searching books that started in December. The Authors Guild wants Google to make the content from books protected under copyright unavailable, as they claim that they have never given permission for their text to be published. However, Google offers the option of having their text removed from their databases.

Google also claims that the text is used under ''fair use'', as they only include "snippets" of the text, and not the entire book. Also, Google sees Google Print as an incentive to authors, as it could help boost sales. “This ability to introduce millions of users to millions of titles can only expand the market for authors’ books, which is precisely what copyright law is intended to foster,” says Google.

The lawsuit was filed by three writers in a New York federal court, and has the support from the U.S.-based Authors Guild. The suit acknowledges that text snippets presented via the internet to users is legal under the U.S. definition of ''fair use''. Rather, the complaint centers on the wholesale copying of a book's text into Google databases.

Another Google Print program, called "Google Print for Publishers", seeks consent from publishers (such as Simon & Schuster, who has given permission) to publish their works. Considering as publishers ''may'' be holders of the copyright in book contents, this could be the sole project of Google Print, assuming Google Print for Libraries is deemed "massive copyright infringement" by the District Court in Manhattan where the suit was filed.