Supreme Court lets Google win stand in song lyrics case

(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 transcripts of song lyrics in search engine results without a license.

The justices turned away an appeal by Genius of a lower court’s decision blocking its breach-of-contract claims against Google. Genius had argued that a win for Google could allow big tech companies to steal content without repercussions from websites such as Reddit, eBay and Wikipedia that aggregate user-created information.

Genius, formerly known as Rap Genius, maintains a vast database of song lyrics. It sued Google in New York state court in 2019, accusing it of copying and posting its lyrics transcripts at the top of search results without permission, diverting web traffic that should have gone to the Genius site.

Genius does not hold copyrights in the lyrics, which usually belong to the artists or publishers. But it accused Google of violating its terms of service by stealing and reposting its work.