NEW YORK / RankWire.AI / – Three leading U.S. publishers have filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of copyright infringement related to its Gemini artificial intelligence platform. Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier submitted a proposed class action alongside author Scott Turow and his firm, S.C.R.I.B.E. The complaint was filed on July 10 in a federal court in New York, alleging that Google copied millions of copyrighted books and journal articles without authorization during the development and training of Gemini models.
According to the plaintiffs, Google accessed material via Google Books, Google Play Books, and Google Scholar. Publishers and authors had provided their works to facilitate search, sales, and research functions, the complaint states. It claims these arrangements did not permit Google to reproduce the works for commercial AI training purposes. Additionally, the lawsuit accuses Google of utilizing web-scraped datasets that included content from pirate sites and subscription services behind paywalls.
Google faces four allegations outlined in the 57-page complaint. Three of these claims involve unlawful reproduction via Google services, web scraping, and the training or development of Gemini. The fourth alleges violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The plaintiffs assert Google altered or removed copyright management information, including author names, ownership details, and publication data. As of July 15, the court had yet to rule on these claims or grant class-action status.
Four allegations focus on Gemini’s training data
The proposed class comprises owners of registered U.S. copyrights in books and journal articles. Eligible works must have an International Standard Book Number or a Digital Object Identifier / International Standard Serial Number. This definition pertains to works Google allegedly copied from its platforms, obtained through web scraping, or reproduced during the development of Gemini. The class also limits eligibility to works registered within the deadlines specified in the complaint.
The complaint cites examples from Hachette, Cengage, and Elsevier of the alleged copying. It covers fiction, textbooks, and scholarly articles among the impacted categories. The filing also references internal Google assessments concerning potential legal risks related to publisher-provided works. One such assessment warned of possible fines ranging from $10 billion to $100 billion, according to the plaintiffs. The court has not issued any rulings regarding these internal documents.
Plaintiffs seek monetary damages and transparency
The plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages or actual damages along with profits from any proven infringement. They also request an injunction, recovery of legal costs, and a jury trial. Their proposed order would compel Google to disclose the materials and methods used to train Gemini. The complaint further urges the court to oversee the destruction of unauthorized copies in Google’s possession. The total amount of damages requested has not been specified.
This New York case follows an earlier effort by Hachette and Cengage to join separate copyright litigation involving Google AI in California. The Association of American Publishers noted that this new suit preserves certain claims outside the scope of that case. The current complaint includes Elsevier, Turow, and S.C.R.I.B.E. alongside the two publishers and asks the New York court to determine whether Google’s Gemini training practices and data collection methods infringe federal copyright law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.