“A federal judge overseeing the approval process for the Google Book Search settlement has rejected an attempt by the Internet Archive (IA) to intervene in the action,” reports Jim Milliot in a Publishers Weekly story. In the ruling, Judge Dennis Chin says he saw the IA objection as “a motion to intervene,” but they are free to “free to file objections to the proposed settlement” by the May 5 deadline.

As per this earlier MobyLives story, the IA wanted the court to “give other companies that have scanned printed books the same protections regarding orphan works [out-of-print titles still in copyright] that would be granted to Google under the terms of the settlement. IA reps said they were considering how to proceed.

Meanwhile people continue to come forward with complaints about the proposed settlement. A New York Times report says “A group of authors and the heirs of others, including representatives of the estate of John Steinbeck, and of the musician Arlo Guthrie,” have asked the court to “delay by four months the deadline for authors to decide whether or not to participate in the settlement” because of “the complexity of the agreement and its long-range implications.”