Google Inc. should help create a Japan-based copyright dispute settlement agency over Japanese books the firm has scanned as part of its massive online library project, a lawyer representing 182 authors in Japan said Wednesday.
Junji Suzuki, a U.S.-based lawyer representing members of the Japan Visual Copyright Association, told a meeting in Tokyo that he sent a letter to Google's Mountain View, Calif., head office last week with the hope of negotiating with the Internet giant the creation of a Japan-based registry of all Japanese books Google plans to make available online, similar to a "book rights registry" to be established in the United States.
Google has agreed to pay for the establishment of the U.S.-based registry under a settlement it reached last October with the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, which had filed a class-action suit against it in 2005.