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By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor-in-Chief<\/p>\n
Nearly six months after seeking to intervene in a high-profile copyright lawsuit<\/a> in California over Google\u2019s Gemini AI service, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has announced that three of its member publishers\u2014Cengage Group, Elsevier, and Hachette Book Group\u2014have now filed their own lawsuit against Google.<\/p>\n The proposed class action suit<\/a>, filed on July 10 in federal court in New York, was also joined by bestselling author Scott Turow. It accuses Google of illegally copying millions of works to train its Gemini AI service, including works scraped from \u201cbehind paywalls\u201d off the web, from \u201cknown pirate sources,\u201d and books scanned and submitted for its Google Books database, its Google Play retail service, and Google Scholar. The suit also accuses Google of removing copyright identification to conceal its actions.<\/p>\n The complaint goes on to note that Gemini can generate \u201ca 100-page murder mystery set in a quiet seaside town filled with secrets, that substitutes for an original copyrighted murder mystery on which Gemini trained\u201d in \u201c20 minutes\u201d for just 39 cents.<\/p>\n \u201cNo publisher or author can compete with that,\u201d the filing states. \u201cUsers are already touting Gemini\u2019s ability to generate books with ease, and the market is flooding with AI-generated substitutes. The scale and speed at which Gemini can create books and compete with human writers is unprecedented, and it can only do that because Google copied Plaintiffs\u2019 and the Class\u2019s works to train its AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Scope-limited?<\/p>\n Perhaps the most eye-opening claims in the suit, however, accuse Google of using copies of books for AI training that were acquired through what the publishers say are \u201cscope-limited\u201d programs\u2014Google Books, the Google Play store, and Google Scholar.<\/p>\n In their complaint, the publishers argue that the \u201clegality of Google Books hinges<\/a> on a narrow, heavily litigated<\/a> premise that Google would provide a free searchable books index to the public\u2014and nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n The publishers argue that nothing in the 2015 U.S. appeals court decision affirming the legality of Google\u2019s massive project to scan and index books<\/a>, authorizes or \u201cdeems it fair use\u201d for Google \u201cto make copies of copyrighted works for the new and separate purpose of training or developing commercial AI models, or indeed any other purpose beyond the then-existing Google Books service.\u201d<\/p>\n Strictly speaking, that is true\u2014nothing in the Google Books decision explicitly authorizes AI training or any program beyond the claims that were at issue in the litigation. But neither did the court expressly limit Google\u2019s use of the scans it acquired for Google Books to providing an index, as the publisher filing could be read to suggest. Rather, the court emphatically affirmed that Google\u2019s copying of entire works for Google Books<\/a> was fair use because the use of the scans was highly transformative, which suggests that other uses of the scans could also be fair use, as long as those uses comport with copyright law.<\/p>\n Things may be much murkier, however, in terms of Google Play Books, which, the complaint notes is \u201ca retail storefront through which publishers and authors sell books.\u201d While the exact terms of the publishers\u2019 Google Play contracts are not included in the complaint, the complaint does state that \u201cauthors and publishers provide Google with access to digital books for the limited purpose of selling authorized ebooks.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, the complaint notes that a third program, Google Scholar, provides Google with access to \u201cmillions of journal articles\u201d but only for \u201cthe limited purpose of powering Google Scholar\u2019s search engine, which directs users to links where the articles can be lawfully accessed.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, the Complaint cites several internal communications that suggest Google officials themselves acknowledged that using \u201cpublisher provided\u2026copyrighted books\u201d from\u00a0Google Play Books to train its AI was\u00a0 potentially \u201chighly problematic for Google.\u201d<\/p>\n The suit seeks to establish a class made up of those whose works have been \u201cinfringed\u201d by Google. Among the proposed relief, the complaint asks the court for an order declaring that Google\u2019s actions violated the Copyright Act; an injunction barring future infringement; monetary damages up to the maximum amount allowed by law; and the destruction of all infringing copies in Google\u2019s possession.<\/p>\n U.S. Publishers Are Ramping Up their AI Fight<\/p>\n The filing is yet another sign that, after waiting out the initial rush of lawsuits against AI companies<\/a>, publishers are now all in.<\/p>\n The Google suit comes just two months after five major academic, professional, and trade publishers (Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, and McGraw Hill), also with author Scott Turow, and organized by the AAP, filed its first AI lawsuit, suing Meta and founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg in New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n Much of the Google suit is based on similar claims contained in the Meta suit, which alleges the \u201cwillful infringement\u201d of millions of works used for training Meta\u2019s large language model<\/a>. Turow is also a named plaintiff in that suit (as well as in a 2023 Authors Guild class action lawsuit against Open AI<\/a>).<\/p>\n And, as noted, the newly filed publisher suit against Google also comes after publishers in January filed a motion to intervene<\/a> in a separate copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Google by a group of authors. That case, In Re Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation<\/a>, was first filed in 2023 and is currently before Judge Eumi K. Lee in the Northern District of California. But despite holding a hearing nearly five months ago<\/a> on class certification, Lee has yet to rule on the publishers\u2019 motion to intervene in the that case.<\/p>\n In a release, AAP reps said the decision to file its own suit against Google \u201caims to preserve the right to pursue all the claims that publishers and their authors have against Google, including important ones that fall outside the putative class in that case,\u201d adding that the action \u201cunderscores that authors and publishers are united in the goal of protecting their valuable intellectual property rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in a separate July 10 filing, the publishers officially withdrew their bid to join the California suit. \u201cCengage and Hachette have thus determined that they must take action to protect claims that appear to be outside the scope of the putative class in this action,\u201d the filing explains. \u201cThe independent assertion of those claims makes intervention unnecessary here. Cengage and Hachette respectfully ask, therefore, that the Court deem the Motion to Intervene withdrawn.\u201d<\/p>\n The publishers\u2019 complaint adds to the long list of actions now filed over AI in the U.S. Courts<\/a>, which reportedly sits at 128, according to blogger Edward Lee\u2019s running count at ChatGPT Is Eating the World.<\/a><\/p>\n The suit also comes as a federal judge could rule any day now on final approval for the $1.5 billion settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic<\/a>, which had its final fairness hearing on May 14<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thus far, copyright lawsuits over AI development have delivered mixed results<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the Anthropic case<\/a>, for example, judge William Alsup in June 2025 found that Anthropic\u2019s use of legally acquired copyrighted books to train its Claude AI system was fair use, including the company\u2019s creation of digitized copies. But the judge also found that the company\u2019s decision to keep millions of unauthorized downloads from pirate sites for a permanent research library was not\u2014a finding that ultimately led to the massive settlement that now awaits final approval.<\/p>\n Also in June 2025, in Kadrey v. Meta, a lawsuit also brought by authors, judge Vincent Chhabria similarly found that AI training on copyrighted works was fair use<\/a>. Chhabria, however, chided the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers for their presentation of the case and suggested that there was likely an issue with \u201cmarket dilution\u201d\u2014that is, the possibility that AI-generated works could disrupt the marketplace for works created by human authors\u2014claims the publisher suits now feature prominently.<\/p>\n About the AuthorAndrew Albanese<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screen-Shot-2026-07-12-at-7.50.28-PM.png\")
\u201cThe result is an AI system that competes directly with Plaintiffs\u2019 and the Class\u2019s works in the market,\u201d the lawsuit claims. \u201cThose substitutes take multiple forms, including verbatim and near-verbatim copies of portions or entire works, replacement chapters of academic textbooks, summaries and alternative versions of famous novels, and inferior knockoffs that copy creative elements of original works.\u201d<\/p>\n