Google may be ready to roll out its copyright protection technology for YouTube as early as September. The search giant and YouTube owner revealed the information on Friday during court proceedings in a copyright violation case Viacom brought against it, according to MediaPost.

Viacom launched the case against Google because of alleged copyright infringements involving content posted on the YouTube video sharing Web site. So far, it has asked YouTube to remove some 100,000 clips from its site.

The technology Google plans to roll out at YouTube will "fingerprint" videos for identification of copyright protected works. Viacom attorney Donald Verrilli was pleased that Google is planning to add copyright protection to YouTube, but added "We'd have been a lot happier if [YouTube had] put this in place when they launched."

Google attorney Philip Beck said that he feels the copyright fingerprinting technology will go "beyond any legal disputes." How well it works, however, has yet to be seen since the company has not offered any public demonstrations.

It is also unclear what impact the technology will have on applications that download videos from YouTube, and then convert them for playback on personal computers and portable media devices like Apple's iPod.

Google and Viacom are scheduled to be back in court on August 6.