A recent United States District Court decision in California has held that a search engine for the Internet, which allows computer users to find photographs on the Web, was not guilty of copyright infringement.

The Company, Ditto.com, copies numerous photographs from various photographers and stores them in its database of more than 3 million images. Computer users would "search" Ditto.com's Web site for a specific or general category, and relevant images would be displayed in thumbnail size. Clicking on an image would bring up a larger version of the image.

One photographer, Leslie Kelly, who had 35 of his images stored in Ditto.com's database, sued for copyright infringement.

The District Court rejected his suit, holding that the copying was a fair use of the images "because of the established importance of search engines and the `transformative' nature of using reduced versions of images to organize and provide access to them."

The issue is one of fundamental importance to all content providers and is on appeal. Various trade groups, including the Graphics Artists Guild in New York, have contributed moral and financial support to Kelly.

The case may help to determine whether search engines, such as Alta Vista and Yahoo, can copy content for the purpose of compiling works to make it easier for Internet users to find material on the Net, without the consent of the copyright owner.

This promises to be the first of many cases in this troubling area.