Writers Sue Google Over Copyright Claims
A group of book writers and publishers, including Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier, have filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of copying copyrighted books and journal articles without permission to train its Gemini AI models. The lawsuit, which was filed on July 10, 2026, claims that Google’s actions constitute “one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history.”
The plaintiffs allege that Google obtained protected material through its book services, internet scraping, and other sources, and then used the content to train Gemini, a commercial generative AI development project. They argue that the agreements they had with Google did not authorize the company to copy entire works into datasets used for commercial AI development.
The plaintiffs allege four legal claims: direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, removal or alteration of copyright-management information, and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They claim that Google repurposed material received through established publishing relationships for uses not covered by the contracts.
The complaint also states that Google collected books and other protected material through extensive internet scraping, including sources such as pirate websites and publications behind subscription or paywalls. The plaintiffs argue that this is a different case from Google’s previous win in a copyright case related to digitizing books for search and snippet previews.
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In 2015, a federal appellate court ruled that Google’s use of books for search and snippet previews was transformative and protected under fair use. However, the plaintiffs argue that this earlier ruling does not apply to the use of entire books to train generative AI models, which serves a different commercial purpose and results in systems that can compete with the original works involved in training.
According to the complaint, a Google employee warned during an internal discussion that using books submitted through Google Play publishing agreements for AI development could create serious legal risks. The employee reportedly estimated that such practices could lead to fines ranging from ten to one hundred billion dollars.
They claim that tests showed models trained only on public domain books performed worse than those trained on collections that included copyrighted works. The complaint states that Google aimed to include works with curated facts, organized analyses, fictional narratives, and professionally edited writing.
The complaint highlights several works as examples, including Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot, N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, and Lemony Snicket’s Who Could That Be at This Hour?.
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As the case develops, Hachette Book Group and other publishers, authors, and academic rights holders who might be part of the proposed class should take some practical steps, including verifying which of their titles are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, reviewing existing agreements with Google Books, Google Play Books, and Google Scholar, and keeping records of publication dates, distribution channels, and any communications with Google regarding the use of their works in AI training datasets.
Elsevier has not yet received a detailed public response from Google to the specific allegations in the complaint. The company will have the opportunity to respond as the case moves forward through motions, potential discovery, and class-certification processes. No trial date has been set, and the court has not ruled on any of the four claims.
Cengage Learning is waiting for the court’s decision.
