(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a bid by website Genius to revive its lawsuit accusing Alphabet’s Google of misusing its transcriptions of song lyrics in search engine results without a license.
The justices rejected an appeal by Genius of a lower court ruling that blocked its breach of contract claim against Google. Genius had argued that a win for Google could allow big tech companies to steal content without repercussions from sites like Reddit, eBay and Wikipedia that aggregate user-generated information.
Genius, formerly known as Rap Genius, has a large database of song lyrics. It sued Google in New York state court in 2019, accusing it of copying and publishing its transcripts at the top of search results without permission, diverting web traffic that should have gone to the Genius site.
Genius does not hold the copyright to the lyrics, which usually belong to the artists or publishers. But it accused Google of violating its terms of service by stealing and republishing its work.
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