Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is being sued by Genius Media Group for copying song lyrics directly from its website, allegedly carried out by Google's partner LyricFinder.
The content being copied appears in information boxes that appear when users search for song lyrics. This is part of the larger controversy surrounding so-called "zero-click results," in which are search engine result pages that display the answer to a user's query at the top of a Google search result.
On Tuesday, Genius filed the official lawsuit in New York against the tech behemoth, stating it demanded "no less than $50 million" for "combined minimum damages" from both Google and LyricFind for duplicating its content.
In June 2019, LyricFinder addressed allegations in a blog post, saying its lyrics are taken from "numerous sources (including direct from artists, publishers, and songwriters), and then [they] proceed to stream, correct, and synchronize that data." It also admitted to "the possibility that our team unknowingly sourced Genius lyrics from another location," offering "to remove any lyrics Genius felt had originated from them, even though we did not source them from Genius' site."
Genius claims that the content-copying has been occurring since 2016, although the misappropriation allegation came to light in June this year. The media company claims that it caught Google, quite literally, "red handed" by using a watermarking scheme involving alternating curly and straight quotation marks and apostrophes in the lyrics that spelled out "red handed" when translated into Morse code.
Genius has sued LyricFind and Google on multiple counts, including: breach of contract, indemnification, unjust enrichment and unfair competition under New York and California law. In addition to monetary damages, Genius wants a permanent injunction that stops the copying of lyrics in the future.
"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," the lawsuit reads. "This action seeks to halt Defendants' unethical and unfair anticompetitive practices, as well as to recover damages for violations of Genius's Terms of Service as a result of defendants' misappropriation."