If you’re one of the many Google Image users that have not turned on safe search, you’ll likely be glad to know that the U.S. Court of Appeals has overturned a previous ruling that would have forced Google to remove thumbnail images of porn taken from the Perfect 10 web site.

The appeals court ruled that the thumbnails fell within a “fair use” exception in copyright law because they play a role in the search process and thus have a function different from that of the original photos.

“We conclude that the significantly transformative nature of Google’s search engine, particularly in light of its public benefit, outweighs Google’s superseding and commercial uses of the thumbnails in this case,” Judge Sandra S. Ikuta wrote for the panel.

The law firm Lerach Coughlin has issued a press release seeking additional Yahoo share holders to join them in a class action law suit claiming the search engine misled stake holders.

The bulk of the complaint surrounds allegations that Yahoo’s ad platform has caused it to lose market share, undermining revenue.

The complaint alleges that Yahoo!’s stock rose precipitously on defendants’ positive statements concerning Yahoo!’s sales growth, record reported revenues and earnings and strong business fundamentals, which defendants stated would provide further stability and growth, reaching a Class Period high of over $43 per share on January 6, 2006. However, concealed from investors was the fact that due to operational deficiencies in its ad technology, Yahoo! was rapidly losing market share to Google and other search engines and Web destinations that would significantly undermine its revenues, earnings and value.

It only took the Belgian newspaper industry 8 months to figure out that blocking Google from their content, is a pretty dumb move.

While the courts haven’t yet decided on whether they want back in to Google News, they are graciously allowing Google to index their newer content and send them visitors. How kind of them.

Google has filed an answer to Viacom’s copyright lawsuit and according to Rob Hof’s summary, the search engine is not taking any chances with its defense.

First up, Google contends Viacom’s suit goes against the principles of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

“By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for Internet communications, Viacom’s complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression.”

If that doesn’t work, Google’s next defense is the Safe Harbor provision…

“We actually got well above and beyond what the law tells us to do,” such as marking copyrighted files that have been taken down once, so they’re immediately taken down the next time they’re uploaded, and a 10-minute limit on uploaded videos, which prevents full TV episodes from even getting posted.

According to eWeek, iLOR, LLC – the parent company of social search company PreFound – is suing Google for infringement of a newly granted patent.

The patent describes a method for adding user selectable functions to a hyperlink, and was only issued on April 17th.

Here’s a description of the patent…