Genius has hit Google and LyricFind with a $50 million lawsuit for allegedly misappropriating their work. The Brooklyn based company has accused the two company’s of using their song transcriptions word-for-word in Google searches. If true, this would drive traffic away from their site directly. To be specific, the music media company is suing for breach of contract and violation of competition laws and unjust enrichment.
The Brooklyn based company’s suit states that they began looking into this back in 2016 when Desiigner released his breakout hit, “Panda”. Genius has argued that Google and LyricFind’s transcription of the song’s lyrics match character for character.
In their complaint, Genius states, “Genius set the 2nd, 5th, 13th, 14th, 16th and 20th apostrophes of each watermarked song as curly apostrophes, and all the other apostrophes straight.”
They added, “If the straight apostrophes are interpreted as dots and the curly apostrophes are interpreted as dashes, the pattern spells out ‘REDHANDED’ in Morse code.”
In response, LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne stated, “We have not had any contact with Genius since June, and in fact, have not even been served with the complaint.” He added, “From what we’re reading online, it is completely frivolous and without merit.”
