Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has managed to delay a lawsuit against it relating to its e-books business, appealing the ability of the Authors Guild of America to sue in a class action lawsuit.

Google has reportedly argued that the case should not be tried as a class action lawsuit since the authors of many of the books that would be scanned by Google Books support the project. According to a Bloomberg report, Google said class representatives "seeking to dismantle Google Books cannot adequately represent absent class members who support the project."

The case is already 7 years old, and stems from Google's plan to scan millions of books to Google databases, where queries via its search engine would then show those areas of text in the original document, online. The project is already well under way, and Google has argued that the process is fair game in copyright law.