An organisation of more than 8,000 authors has accused Google of "massive copyright infringement," claiming that the internet search engine does not have permission to put its books in the public domain for commercial use.

"The authors’ works are contained in certain public and university libraries and have not been licensed for commercial use," the American organisation, the Author’s Guild, said in its written submission to the US District Court in Manhattan.

The submission asked the court to block Google from copying the books so that the authors would not suffer irreparable harm by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works. It sought class-action status on behalf of anyone or any entity with a copyright to a literary work at the University of Michigan library.

The Author’s Guild, a non-profit organisation based in New York, said its primary purpose as the nation’s largest organisation of authors was to support the copyright and contractual interests of published writers.

"By reproducing for itself a copy of those works that are not in the public domain, Google is engaging in massive copyright infringement. It has infringed, and continues to infringe, the electronic rights of the copyright holders of those works," it said.

The Guild claimed in its legal documents that Google knew or should have known that copyright laws required it to obtain authorisation from copyright owners of literary works to create and reproduce digital copies for its own commercial use.

"Despite this knowledge, Google has unlawfully reproduced the works and has announced plans to reproduce and display the works without the copyright holders’ authorisation."

Google responded by saying that it respects copyright.

"We regret that this group has chosen litigation to try to stop a programme that will make books and the information within them more discoverable to the world," the company said.

It said authors and publishers can exclude books from the scheme if they don’t want their material included.

Google has said it offers protections to copyright holders by limiting users of books covered by copyrights to bibliographic information and a few sentences of text.

The company also has said it will direct readers who want more to booksellers and libraries.

In December, Google announced its library initiative, saying it would be scanning and indexing material from the New York public library as well as libraries at four universities - Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford.

The Michigan and Stanford libraries had agreed to submit all of their material to the Google scanners.

In Europe, Google is already facing multiple challenges to its rights to use the copyrighted name "GMail" for its e-mail service.

Shares of Google rose $4.12, or 1.4 per cent, to close at $307.91 Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive