Publishers and authors has filed a class action lawsuit against Google in a New York Federal Court
Google did not inform the authors and publishers that the company was copying their works earlier
There are several pending lawsuits against OpenAI brought by various authors
A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT has been filed by a group of authors and publishers against Google in a New York Federal Court on July 10, 2026, Friday. These publishers and authors include Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, Scott Turow, and his publishing house S.C.R.I.B.E. Inc. for illegally copying millions of journal articles and copyrighted books to develop and train its Gemini AI models.
A nearly 60-page complaint filed by a group of authors and publishers said, “Google willfully sidestepped this longstanding system designed to protect the copyrights and compensate authors and publishers through a series of deliberate choices to develop Gemini1.”
These publishers and authors allege that Silicon Valley Tech Giant committed large-scale copyright infringement by copying works from its own book service, articles through web scraping, downloading books, reproducing these content with the help of Artificial Intelligence, and removing all the Copyright Management Information (CMI) in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The lawsuit follows a previous attempt by Hachette Book Group and Cengage to join a pre-existing class action lawsuit brought by the group of authors in the year 2023. Hachette said in a statement, “The scope of the complaint underscores that authors and publishers are united to protect their intellectual property rights in works of fiction, kid’s books, memoirs, and poetry, educational works and scholarly articles that span thousands of subject areas.
“Desperate to maintain its online dominance, Google abandoned its previous motto, ‘Don’t be evil.’ The company is engaged in one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history. Google first copied millions of books and articles to assemble a vast trove of copyrighted materials for its commercial use,” said in the lawsuit filed in New York Federal Court.
The lawsuit claims that the tech giant was fully aware of the legal risks, alleging that internal documents warned using books to train AI models was ‘highly problematic for Google’ and could lead to $100bn in fines. Google did not inform the authors and publishers that the company was copying their works as source material to develop and train AI models.
The publishers alleges that Google has profited, “and continues to profit massively,” from this infringement. They further mentioned that in October 2025, Google’s parent company, Alphabet reported its first ever $100 billion revenue quarter, which was solely driven by Google’s AI business.
See also: Meta and TikTok Face Lawsuit From Italian Woman After Daughter Dies by Suicide
The lawsuit filed against Google is not the latest copyright infringement claimed against AI developers. According to a report published by Le Mode, these publishers had sued social media titan Meta on similar grounds in the New York Court. Another case took place in September 2025, when a US Judge had approved a $1.5 billion settlement between several authors and Anthropic, who had claimed that the company illegally copied their work to train their AI model, Claude.
There are several pending lawsuits against OpenAI brought by various authors including George RR Martin, Song of Ice and Fire author of Game of Thrones, and the Authors Guild. In October 2025, a Federal Judge denied OpenAI’s attempt to dismiss the case.
(Edited by Harsh Pandey)
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