Google Sued by Publishers on Copyright Infringement Charges

A bunch of publishers has taken Google to court claiming the latter is promoting pirated copies of their books. As Reuters reported, the case has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York where the publishers – Cengage, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill, and Elsevier – accused Google of making a profit from the sale of pirated e-books that are advertised on its search engine.

“The artificially low-priced infringing works drown out the regularly priced legitimate works,” the lawsuit said. “Of course, the pirate sellers can sell their infringing works at such low prices because they did nothing to create or license them; they just illegally made digital copies.”

The lawsuit accused Google of not only promoting the ads of pirated e-books while disregarding the ads for legal copies of the book. The publishers also said they have made repeated pleas to Google to address the issue but to no avail. In fact, it has been several thousand copyright-infringement notices that the publishers said they have been sending to Google since 2021 though the search-engine giant never paid any heed to them, prompting the publishers to take the legal recourse.

Among the charges brought against Google include copyright and trademark infringement and deceptive trade practices. The publishers are seeking monetary compensation that should be commensurate with the damage they have suffered due to Google’s acts. However, the exact amount is yet to be fixed. Matt Oppenheim and Michele Murphy of Oppenheim + Zebrak are representing the publishers.