Genius loses one more lawsuit against Google

Three years ago, lyric provider Genius accused the search engine company Google of tapping data without permission. Although the company was even able to prove the allegations, the service lost another legal battle against Google. Genius had sued Google a while ago. However, the court dismissed the lawsuit because Genius does not own the actual rights to the lyrics. While lyrics are often written and uploaded by Genius users, copyrights remain with the artists who originally wrote the lyrics. Licenses and annotations added by Genius are also not allowed to play a role.

Only the rightholders can sue

how The verge writes, the second instance has now reconfirmed the 2020 verdict. The court, therefore, shares the opinion that Genius has no rights to the texts and therefore cannot sue Google. Although the responsible judges did not deny that the search engine group copied the texts without permission, they found that only the actual rights holders, ie the artists themselves, could take action against Google. However, it is unlikely that most songwriters are interested in whether and by whom the lyrics are provided.

It is therefore quite unlikely that the artists will file a lawsuit against the search engine group. Genius had tricked Google in 2019 by providing many song lyrics with hidden watermarks. For this, alternating straight and slightly sloping quotes were used, which could then be interpreted as Morse code, resulting in the term “caught”. The lyric provider was thus able to catch the search engine in the act and justify the allegations, although they were initially denied by Google.