NEW YORK / RankWire.AI / – Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning and Elsevier have sued Google over its Gemini artificial intelligence service. Author Scott Turow and his company, S.C.R.I.B.E., joined the proposed class action. The plaintiffs filed the complaint on July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They allege Google copied millions of copyrighted books and journal articles without permission while developing and training Gemini. As of July 15, the court had not ruled on the claims or certified the proposed class.
The complaint says Google obtained material through Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar. Publishers and authors had supplied works for specific functions, including search, sales and research access. The plaintiffs say those arrangements did not authorize broader commercial AI training. They also allege Google downloaded large web-scraped datasets containing copyrighted works. The filing says some material came from known pirate sources and services protected by paywalls.
The 57-page complaint sets out four claims under federal law. Three concern alleged reproduction through Google services, web scraping, and Gemini development or training. The fourth cites the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The plaintiffs allege Google removed or changed copyright management information from training materials. The filing also cites alleged internal discussions about using publisher-provided books. One cited assessment placed potential fines between $10 billion and $100 billion. The court has not tested those allegations.
Proposed class covers registered works
The proposed class covers owners of registered U.S. copyrights in qualifying books and journal articles. Eligible books must carry an International Standard Book Number, commonly known as an ISBN. Eligible articles must carry a Digital Object Identifier or International Standard Serial Number. The definition covers works allegedly copied from Google services or downloaded during web scraping. It also covers works allegedly reproduced during Gemini development or training.
Copyright registration timing also limits membership under the complaint. One path requires registration within five years of publication and before Google’s alleged reproduction or distribution. Another requires registration within three months of publication. The filing excludes government entities, Google affiliates, certain court participants and people who properly leave the class. The court must approve class status before the case can proceed for the broader group.
Complaint seeks damages and accounting
The plaintiffs seek statutory damages or actual damages linked to any infringement proven in court. They also request Google profits attributable to any established copyright violation. Their requested relief includes an injunction, legal costs and a jury trial. The complaint does not provide a total damages figure. It asks Google to disclose Gemini training materials, data collection methods and known model capabilities through a court-ordered accounting.
That accounting would identify books and other copyrighted works used to train Gemini. It would also describe how Google collected, copied, processed and encoded those materials. The plaintiffs further request court-supervised destruction of unauthorized copies under Google’s control. Hachette and Cengage earlier sought to join separate Google generative AI litigation in California. The New York case adds Elsevier, Turow and S.C.R.I.B.E. while pursuing claims tied to Google services, web scraping and Gemini training.