The U.S. Supreme Court has shut down a Genius lawsuit accusing Google of publishing lyrics in search results that were sourced, unlicensed, from its archive. Genius, which was appealing a Court of Appeals dismissal in 2022, had argued that the decision could allow companies like Google to steal content from websites that aggregate user-created content. The Solicitor General had recommended this year that the Supreme Court reject the case.

Genius first accused Google of “lifting” lyrics from its website to publish in its search results in 2019, claiming it could prove that Google took lyrics from its website because the lyrics were “watermarked” by a system of alternating straight and curled apostrophes. Genius used the same sequence for every song; when the two types of apostrophe are converted to dots and dashes, they spell “red handed” in Morse code. Google denied the claim, and said that it licensed lyrics through a partnership with a Canadian company called LyricFind.

Six months later, Genius filed a lawsuit against Google and LyricFind for a minimum of $50 million. LyricFind also denied lifting content from Genius. The lawsuit was dismissed in August 2020; the presiding judge found that since Genius does not own the rights to the original lyrics, the company did not have legal standing to file the lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld that decision in March 2022, ruling that the complaint should be treated like a copyright case, which was problematic for Genius, since it does not own the lyrics’ copyright—that remains with the artists and publishers.

In 2014, Genius (then known as RapGenius) was punished by Google for using distasteful SEO practices, burying its website in the back pages of search results, even for terms like “rap genius.” The punishment was lifted shortly after the site removed the offending content.

Read more about the lyric-transcription industry in “How ‘Fake’ My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins Lyrics Ended Up on Spotify.”

https://pitchfork.com/news/genius-denied-appeal-to-supreme-court-in-suit-against-google