Supreme Court Dismisses Case Against Google for Alleged Misappropriation of Song Lyrics
Genius Media Group Inc.’s lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, alleging the theft of millions of song lyrics, was not revived by the US Supreme Court.
The judges upheld a ruling that dismissed a lawsuit that accused Google of breaching its contract with Genius by using the lyrics of its songs in search results without attribution.
It’s the latest high court victory for Google, which earlier this year won a battle over whether its video streaming platform YouTube could be held liable for hosting terrorist videos.
There are deep disagreements about how copyright laws apply to online speech and interconnection. The lower court said that Genius owns no copyright to its lyrics – instead, they are held by songwriters and publishers.
Genius claimed that Google breached its contract by scraping the lyrics and highlighting them in Google search results without attribution. Genius, which claimed the saga cost the website millions of dollars in losses, originally sued Google in 2019. To gain attention and prove its case, Genius said it used a secret code that spelled out the word “red-handed” to prove Google stole its words.
“We appreciate the court’s decision, we agree with the Solicitor General and several lower courts that Genius’ claims have no merit,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said Monday. “We add lyrics to Google search from third parties and do not crawl or scrape websites for source lyrics.”
The terms of service used on most websites are generally governed by state law. Genius and its supporters argued that the ruling could effectively water down contractual protections that websites enjoy when users agree to terms.
Read more: Google Lyric-Scraping Fight With Genius Is Prepared For Supreme Court
Google argued that Genius was trying to make a “quasi-copyright claim” under the guise of contract law. Federal law bars lawsuits over copyright-like matters, even if they don’t specifically focus on claims of copyright infringement. This difference proved fatal to the case of Genius.
Genius said the lower court’s decision “threatens to hurt thousands of companies that provide value by aggregating user-generated information or other content.”
U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Prelogar, a Supreme Court lawyer under the Biden administration, urged the justices to throw out the case, arguing that it is a “poor vehicle” for resolving the tension between copyright law and contract rights.
The case is ML Genius Holdings v. Google, 22-121.
