Google wins court battle with Genius over song lyrics

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In an ongoing legal battle with Genius, which claimed that it was being used without permission in search results, Google was once again victorious.

Genius filed a lawsuit against Google, arguing that it was in violation of their copyrighted work. Genius has a large database of song lyrics and bills itself as the world's biggest music encyclopedia.

In a post on its website, it was stated that it did not crawl or steal websites to source song lyrics. Canadian lyrics licensing site LyricFind is a defendant in the Genius lawsuit.

In August 2020 a judge ruled that the claims of scraper weren't a violation of the Copyright Act since Genius isn't the actual owner of the lyrics. Genius licenses the lyrics, adding to them through derivative works, but not the actual lyrics.

The lyrics are protected by the copyrighted works of Genius, according to a three-judge panel in the 2nd Circuit.