{"id":28047,"date":"2023-06-30T09:57:16","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T13:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/?p=977790"},"modified":"2023-06-30T09:57:16","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T13:57:16","slug":"supreme-court-rejects-genius-preposterously-stupid-lawsuit-against-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2023\/06\/30\/supreme-court-rejects-genius-preposterously-stupid-lawsuit-against-google\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Rejects Genius\u2019 Preposterously Stupid Lawsuit Against Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"942310\"Look,\u00a0we were not kind<\/a>\u00a0when Genius first accused Google of copying lyrics from its site. The only interesting bit was the cleverness with which Genius figured out Google had copied the lyrics from its site, by sneakily adding in curved or non-curved apostrophes to see if the same ones showed up in Google\u2019s version of the lyrics.<\/p>\n

But, as we noted at the time, even if Google copied the lyrics from Genius, that was not a legal matter. After all, Genius did not hold any rights in the lyrics, and its method of \u201cgetting\u201d the lyrics was basically having people copy down what they heard (one of the stupid things about copyright and lyrics is that there are no official lyrics most of the time, and every lyric site, even those that \u201clicense\u201d lyrics, still have to figure out what those lyrics are, which is just kinda crazy when you think about it). And, more importantly, we had a lawsuit almost exactly on this point years ago, where a phone book company inserted fake entries to capture those who \u201ccopied\u201d their phone book, and\u00a0the court said that you can\u2019t copyright facts<\/a>, and allowed it to stand.<\/p>\n

We were even less kind when Genius stupidly\u00a0sued Google anyway<\/a>. And we were not at all surprised when a\u00a0judge rejected the many, many, many ways<\/a>\u00a0in which the company tried to turn this into a legal claim. And so, it\u2019s no surprise that this case ends with a complete whimper as\u00a0the Supreme Court rejected<\/a>\u00a0Genius\u2019 cert petition with no comment.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s really not much more to say about this other than whoever decided to bring this case in the first place was no genius, and just wasted a bunch of money on high priced lawyers to bring an exceptionally silly case.<\/p>\n

Next time, the company should just put a copy of its planned complaint on Genius for copyright experts to annotate before they bring such a silly lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Supreme Court Rejects Genius\u2019 Preposterously Stupid Lawsuit Against Google<\/a><\/p>\n

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Not genius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":942313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1232,85,7],"class_list":["post-28047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-google","tag-intellectual-property","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSupreme Court Rejects Genius\u2019 Preposterously Stupid Lawsuit Against Google - Above The Law's Legal Tech Non-Event<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2023\/06\/30\/supreme-court-rejects-genius-preposterously-stupid-lawsuit-against-google\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supreme Court Rejects Genius\u2019 Preposterously Stupid Lawsuit Against Google - 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