Law note · United States (federal only)
Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc.
cite 508 F.3d 1146 (9th Cir. 2007)
stage IN FORCE
The Ninth Circuit held that Google's thumbnail-sized image search results were highly transformative fair use because they function as pointers to information rather than substitutes for original images. The court also articulated the 'server test': inline linking or framing of images hosted on a third-party server does not constitute copyright infringement by the linker because the linker does not copy or serve the underlying content. This is the foundational authority on linking and framing liability in the Ninth Circuit.
Primary source: Copyright.gov fair use summaries
citation confirmed from search results as 508 F.3d 1146