Genius wants compensation from Google for copying lyrics
Lyrics website Genius is suing both Google and its partner LyricFind for allegedly copying lyrics from Genius’ platform. That would have led to less traffic to Genius and the website therefore wants compensation from both parties.
The lawsuit alleges that Genius believes Google and LyricFind are each liable for at least $50 million. Genius also wants to ensure that Google and LyricFind no longer continue with what the lyric website describes as “unethical and unfair anti-competitive acts.” Genius states that LyricFind retrieved the lyrics from Genius webpages, after which Google uses them by displaying the lyrics in special boxes in the search results of its search engine.
According to the platform, there is clear evidence of Google’s trading. Genius describes how it started inserting a “digital watermark” into certain lyrics on its website in 2016. That simply involved varying the use of curved and straight apostrophes. That led to the text ‘red handed’ in Morse code, or English for ‘red handed’. Genius first alerted Google to the presence of the watermark in a lyric display on Google in May 2017.
Based on this watermark, Genius states that, for example, between October and December last year, a total of 301 songs were provided with these watermarks and Google would have shown 90 percent of them, or 271 songs, in its search results. Of those 271 lyrics, 43 percent had clear evidence of a corresponding watermark, Genius says.
The website has addressed Google about this several times. Google defended itself in April by saying that the lyrics are obtained through multiple licensees and not through scraping. In June, Genius came out with his allegations, after which Google reiterated its position in a blog post. LyricFind also quickly responded; the company stated that all samples were also available on other lyric websites and services and that it may have collected lyrics from Genius from another location.
It remains to be seen whether Genius has much of a chance in this case, because the company cannot invoke copyrights. This website does not own the transcriptions of songs and will mainly invoke a provision in which the scraping of lyrics from its website is not allowed.