A federal judge has rejected Amazon.com (AMZN)’s request to prevent “preliminary approval” of the Google Books settlement.

Here’s more from Reuters: “In a Tuesday ruling, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said he planned to conduct a ‘thorough fairness analysis’ of the settlement at a February 18, 2010 hearing and Amazon could argue its case then.”

All year Google (GOOG) and the Authors Guild have struggled to finalize over Google’s efforts to scan millions of pages of books into an online database. When asked about the settlement in June, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wondered why Google should “get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights.”