U.S. District Judge Denny Chin postponed the fairness hearing scheduled for October 7, a hearing that would have helped decide the fate of the Google Books settlement–scheduling a “status conference” to reassess the state of the class action suit.
“Under all the circumstances, it makes no sense to conduct a hearing on the fairness and reasonableness of the current settlement agreement, as it does not appear the the current settlement will be the operative one,” the judge wrote, according to Reuters.
Exactly one week ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) urged a federal judge to reject the class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc.–pushing for revisions in this Google Books settlement. For over a year, this case has left the future of Google’s massive database of scanned book titles undecided.