• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 11, 2022

Siding with Google, a federal appellate court won't revive Genius Media Group's lawsuit alleging that song lyrics on its platform were misappropriated by the tech giant. 

The ruling, issued Thursday by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, upheld a decision handed down in August of 2020 by a district court judge.

The legal battle dates to December of 2019, when Genius sued Google, along with the company LyricFind, for allegedly copying lyrics from Genius's site and displaying them in the search results. (LyricFind allegedly scraped the lyrics and licensed them to Google.)

Genius brought various New York state law claims against the companies, including that they engaged in unfair competition, violated Genius's terms of service and misappropriated Genius's content.

Genius didn't own copyrights in the lyrics, which were posted by users, and didn't claim that Google infringed federal copyright law.

Google and LyricFind contended that the lawsuit should be dismissed at an early stage, arguing that Genuis's claims were actually rooted in federal copyright law -- which overrides state laws.

“The complaint alleges 10 purported state law-based causes of action... These are in essence claims for copyright infringement disguised as various state law causes of action,” lawyers for Google and LyricFind wrote.

U.S. District Court Judge Margo Brodie in the Eastern District of New York dismissed Genius's lawsuit in 2020, ruling that the company's claims were precluded by federal copyright law.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit said Thursday it agreed with that decision.

Last year, Genius was among numerous online publishers that brought antitrust lawsuits against Google. Those matters are pending in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.