The Biden administration’s solicitor general said Tuesday that the U.S. Supreme Court should not review Google LLC’s (GOOGL.O) verdict against song-lyric website Genius over Google’s alleged duplication of Genius’ lyric transcriptions.
In a court brief, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the justices to uphold the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that federal copyright law preempted Genius’ case.
Google does not “crawl or scrape websites to source lyrics,” a representative said Wednesday. “The solicitor general and multiple courts continue to find that Genius’ claims have no merit.”
Wednesday’s attempts to respond to Genius and the solicitor general went unanswered.
In 2019, Rap Genius sued Google in a New York State court for allegedly displaying its lyric transcriptions at the top of Google search results without authorization.
Artists and publishers control the lyrics, not Genius. It accused Google of violating its terms of service by stealing and publishing its content on Google web pages.
Last year, the 2nd Circuit upheld a Manhattan federal court’s ruling that Genius’ breach-of-contract claims were copyright-based and could only be prosecuted in a copyright action.
The Genius told the Supreme Court that Google’s triumph might empower huge tech companies to take content from Reddit, eBay, and Wikipedia without consequences.
Google claimed it possesses lyrical licenses and that Genius seeks to “ignore the true copyright owners and invent new rights through a purported contract.”
Prelogar on Tuesday questioned the 2nd Circuit’s conclusion that copyright law “categorically” precludes contract claims based on a “promise not to copy” creative works.
The solicitor general advised rejecting the petition because Genius could not prove a genuine contract with Google. Prelogar said there was “little indication” another appeals court would have handled the issue differently.
