An organisation of more than 8,000 authors accused Google of "massive copyright infringement" saying the powerful Internet search engine cannot put their books in the public domain for commercial use without permission.

"The authors' works are contained in certain public and university libraries and have not been licensed for commercial use," The Author's Guild Inc. said in the lawsuit in US District Court in Manhattan.

The lawsuit asked the court to block Google from copying the books so the authors would not suffer irreparable harm by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works. It sought class-action status on behalf of anyone or any entity with a copyright to a literary work at the University of Michigan library.

The Author's Guild, a New York-based nonprofit organization, said its primary purpose as the nation's largest organisation of book authors was to advocate for and support the copyright and contractual interests of published writers.

"By reproducing for itself a copy of those works that are not in the public domain, Google is engaging in massive copyright infringement. It has infringed and continues to infringe, the electronic rights of the copyright holders of those works," it said.

The lawsuit said Google knew or should have known that copyright laws required it to obtain authorisation from copyright owners of literary works to create and reproduce digital copies for its own commercial use.