On Friday, Google filed for summary judgment in the Google Books case against the Authors’ Guild, renewing its argument that the entire project constitutes fair use. That company argues therefore that it does not need permission from authors in order to scan substantial portions of their work.

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Monday is the first day of fall. But no fear, we already have a guess as to what the legal theme of the upcoming season might be: the scrutinized and/or rejected settlement.

Of course, we’ve written a lot about the rejected settlement in the Bank of America/SEC matter, but another big settlement is getting an exceedingly close look prior to a hearing before New York federal judge Denny Chin on Oct. 7.

That settlement, which we’ve also written a bit about before (here and here), involves Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Over the weekend, the parties said they were hashing out what changes they are willing to make to the agreement following the Justice Department’s objections, formally articulated on Friday.

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When the US Copyright Office first heard about the proposed Google Books settlement, it found the idea a “positive development.” Then, after reading the fine print, it changed its collective mind, deciding instead that Google was really out to rewrite US copyright law through the courts.

Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, today explained to Congress (PDF) her office’s objections to what Google hoped to do:

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Last Friday, the deadline passed for formal comments from parties interested in the Google Book Settlement, but the flow of less-formal comments doesn’t seem to have abated. The settlement would turn the search giant into the gatekeeper for out-of-print books, and a variety of groups have now expressed concern for the sweeping changes it would allegedly make to the management of copyrights. This week, however, the focus has shifted to Europe, where Google has faced opposition from France and Germany that has prompted it to offer some concessions to local publishers.

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