Google Calls Viacom Suit on YouTube Unfounded

Responding
to Viacom
’s $1 billion copyright infringement suit over
video clips on YouTube, Google said Monday that it would not back off,
declaring that the law was on its side.

“We are not going to let
this lawsuit distract us,” Michael Kwun, managing counsel for litigation at
Google, told reporters.

In its response to the
lawsuit, filed Monday in

Federal
District Court in

Manhattan, Google said that Viacom’s claims
were unfounded and asked for a judgment dismissing the complaint.

In March, Viacom, the
parent company of MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, sued Google and YouTube,
the video sharing site it acquired last year, saying they were deliberately
building a business on a library of copyrighted video clips without permission.
Earlier this year, Viacom had asked YouTube to take down 100,000 clips that it
said infringed on its copyrights.
Full Story in NY Times.