Federal judge Denny Chin signed off on a four-month extension in the Google and the Authors Guild settlement.

According to Publishers Weekly, the legal deadline for writers to agree to the settlement or fight it in court used to be May 5, but has now been moved to September 2009. Both parties are working to finalize a settlement to the Guild’s lawsuit over Google’s efforts to scan millions of pages of books into an online database.

Here’s more from Wired Magazine: “A small coalition of copyright holders, including folk singer Arlo Guthrie, John Steinbeck‘s heirs and sci-fi god Philip K. Dick‘s trust, asked a federal court judge Friday to give all book authors another four months to comprehend and respond to the 334-page settlement proposed last October after the Author’s Guild sued Google for massive copyright violations in its Google Book Search product.”