The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Friday rejected infringement claims from the Authors Guild and several individual writers against Google's online project to scan millions of books for public usage online.

The project began in 2005, but has been halted by litigation from authors who argued that Google would deprive them of revenue. 

A judge dismissed the authors' claims in 2013 and this time ruled the project was a public service that did not violate intellectual property law. Google was given the green light to show "snippets" of tens of millions of scanned published works.

"Google's division of the page into tiny snippets is designed to show the searcher just enough context surrounding the searched term to help her evaluate whether the book falls within the scope of her interest (without revealing so much as to threaten the author's copyright interests)," Circuit Judge Pierre Leval wrote.