Google is aiming to create the world’s largest digital library, including orphan works, and has already scanned more than 20 million books for the project – without the prior permission from all of the authors concerned.

Judge Denny Chin, in a written statement issued yesterday, said that a class action would be “more efficient and effective than requiring thousands of authors to sue individually”.

He added that requiring each author to sue Google individually could produce disparate results in a group of identical court cases and incur huge litigation costs.

A Google spokesman said that it was “confident that Google Books is fully compliant within copyright law".

The Author’s Guild of American has also sought a class action against the technology giant over this issue.