Music Site Genius Sues Google Over Alleged Lyric Copying

The music site Genius is now suing Google for $50 million on claims the tech giant copied its lyrics and displayed them in the search results for songs.

On Tuesday, the music site filed the lawsuit against Google and company partner LyricFind, claiming the lyric stealing drove down traffic to Genius.com. The controversy was first publicized back in June when Genius told The Wall Street Journal it had proof the copying was taking place; back in 2016, the music site had been secretly watermarking certain songs with patterns of apostrophes.

Genius later found Google displaying copies of those same watermarked lyrics in the company's search results. Specifically, the copied lyrics appeared in "information panels" that pop up as the first result when you look up a song.

"Defendants Google LLC and LyricFind have been caught red-handed misappropriating content from Genius's website, which they have exploited —and continue to exploit— for their own financial benefit and to Genius's financial detriment," reads the lawsuit from Genius, which reportedly has more than a 1,000 examples of the lyric stealing.

However, both Google and LyricFind have disputed the allegations. "We do not crawl or scrape websites to source these lyrics," the tech giant said back in June. "The lyrics that you see in information boxes on Search come directly from lyrics content providers, and they are updated automatically as we receive new lyrics and corrections on a regular basis."

Google says it actually licenses the song lyrics from LyricFind, which relies on multiple sources to pull the text. These sources include the artists, songwriters and record labels, in addition to user submissions and other music websites.

"All of [Genius' watermarketing] examples were also available on many other lyric sites and services, raising the possibility that our team unknowingly sourced Genius lyrics from another location," LyricFind said back in June. In other words, the copying was simply an accident.

"We have not had any contact with Genius since June, and in fact, have not even been served with the complaint," LyricFind's CEO Darryl Ballantyne told PCMag in an email on Tuesday. "From what we're reading online, it is completely frivolous and without merit."

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Nevertheless, Genius 's lawsuit is also demanding LyricFind pay no less than $50 million in damages. The same lawsuit is seeking a permanent injunction against LyricFind from lifting song lyrics from Genius.

But the chances of the lawsuit succeeding may be slim. According to The Wall Street Journal, Genius faces an uphill battle in the courts because it doesn't own the copyright claim to the song lyrics; those rights are actually held by the songwriters and record labels. Still, Genius's lawsuit will try to argue that both Google and LyricFind violated Genius.com's terms of service by copying the lyrics, which entitles the music site to seek damages.

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