On 10 July 2026, Hachette Book Group, Cengage, Elsevier and the novelist Scott Turow filed a class action against Google in New York, alleging that Gemini was trained on millions of books and journal articles copied without permission. The most important argument for anyone who licenses content is what the complaint calls “scope-limited” programmes: works handed to Google for Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar were licensed for search or sale only, not for AI training. If you license catalogues to platforms in Europe or Latin America, this Gemini copyright lawsuit by publishers is a reason to reread the scope clauses of those deals.
Update (October 2026): in a letter filed on 10 August 2026, Google asked Judge Loretta A. Preska to transfer the case to the Northern District of California under the “first-filed” rule, where an earlier class action over Google’s generative AI is pending. Google also pointed to California forum-selection agreements it says it has with the named plaintiffs. Google’s letter, Hachette v. Google, ECF No. 26.
Key takeaways
- The case is Hachette Book Group, Inc. et al. v. Google LLC, No. 1:26-cv-05870, US District Court for the Southern District of New York, filed on 10 July 2026.
- The plaintiffs claim that content provided for limited purposes was reused to train Gemini: the scope of the original permission is the heart of the case.
- They also allege copying from pirate sites and paywalled content. All of this is still unproven.
- Under Spanish law, a transfer of rights that does not specify its uses is limited to what the contract’s purpose strictly requires.
What is the Gemini copyright lawsuit by publishers about?
The class action complaint is brought by three publishers (trade, educational and scientific) and by Scott Turow and his company, on behalf of a proposed class of authors and publishers. It contains four counts: reproduction of works obtained through Google Books and other Google services; reproduction through web scrapes, including Google’s C4 dataset built from Common Crawl; reproduction during training of the Gemini models; and removal of copyright management information under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
They seek statutory damages, an injunction, destruction of infringing copies and an account of the training materials used, arguing that a market for AI training licences already exists.
What is the “scope-limited licence” theory?
The complaint says publishers and authors gave Google access to their works for defined services, each with a defined purpose. According to the plaintiffs, none of them covered AI training:
| Google service | Purpose for which works were provided (per the complaint) | What the plaintiffs say was never authorised |
|---|---|---|
| Google Books | A searchable index showing snippets and links to buy or borrow | Copying the works to train commercial AI models |
| Google Play Books | Selling authorised ebooks | Using the files to train or develop Gemini |
| Google Scholar | Powering search that points to lawful copies of articles | Copying articles for AI development |
The plaintiffs add that the 2015 Second Circuit ruling that found Google Books to be fair use covered search and snippet functions only. They also cite internal Google documents that allegedly described training on publisher-provided Play Books content as “highly problematic”. Google will have its own reading of what its agreements permit.
Would the same argument work in Spain and the EU?
European law already leans towards narrow readings of licences. Article 43 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Act limits a transfer of rights to the rights, modes of exploitation, term and territory expressly agreed. If the modes are not specified, the transfer covers only what follows necessarily from the contract and is indispensable to its purpose, and it never extends to uses unknown when the contract was signed. Article 45 requires transfers to be in writing.
At EU level, Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive lets rights holders reserve their works against text and data mining, for example by machine-readable means for online content. Article 53(1)(c) of the EU AI Act requires providers of general-purpose AI models to have a copyright policy that respects those reservations. A licence binds your partner; a reservation addresses everyone else.
What this means for your business
- Map every platform, aggregator or distributor that holds your content.
- Check the purpose clause. Look for wording such as “for the purpose of”, “solely to” or “to operate the service”, and for broad grants such as “improve our services”, which a partner may read as covering AI.
- Add an express AI clause. State whether training, fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation and output generation are permitted, licensed separately or excluded.
- Align your technical reservations with your contracts, so that what you refuse in the licence is also reserved online.
- Review governing law and forum. Each country in a Europe and Latin America portfolio interprets licences differently, and forum clauses decide where you can sue.
If your catalogue is licensed in several countries, our team for AI and digital asset licensing can audit the scope of each deal and draft AI-specific terms.
Where rights holders get licence scope wrong
- Relying on silence. A contract that does not mention AI invites a dispute about whether a broad clause covers it.
- Signing platform terms without negotiation. Standard terms often contain the broadest grants.
- Forgetting the chain. Sub-licences to distributors and aggregators can carry your content further than the original deal intended.
- Keeping no record of what was delivered, when and under which agreement, which is the evidence any claim will need.
Our IP licensing and enforcement team keeps these issues in one file across countries.
Frequently asked questions
Who is suing Google over Gemini and where?
Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, the author Scott Turow and his company S.C.R.I.B.E. filed a proposed class action on 10 July 2026 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, case No. 1:26-cv-05870. They allege copyright infringement in sourcing and training Gemini and removal of copyright management information.
Does licensing content for search allow AI training?
Not automatically. The answer depends on the wording of the licence and the governing law. The publishers argue that permissions given for search, sales or scholarly indexing did not cover training. In Spain, a transfer that does not specify its uses is limited to what the contract’s purpose requires.
Should European publishers add AI clauses to existing licences?
In most cases, yes. An express clause that permits, prices or excludes training, fine-tuning and retrieval uses reduces the room for dispute. It works best alongside a machine-readable text and data mining reservation under Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive for content published online.
Can IP Global Guard review our content licences for AI risks?
Yes. We review licence scope across your portfolio, draft AI clauses and reservations, and coordinate qualified local counsel where national law or enforcement requires it, across Europe, Latin America and Africa, with one point of contact.
How IP Global Guard helps you control AI uses of your content
IP Global Guard, the IP services line of META Channel Corporation Limited, manages copyright licensing, AI clauses and enforcement in more than 25 jurisdictions across Europe, Latin America and Africa, with one strategy and one billing relationship. Within the same group, our regulatory team covers the EU AI Act.
Send us your main platform and distribution agreements and the markets where your content is licensed. We will tell you where the scope is unclear and how to close it. Talk to our team.
This article is general information, not legal advice, and reflects the position on the date of publication.
Sources
- Hachette Book Group, Inc. et al. v. Google LLC, No. 1:26-cv-05870 (S.D.N.Y.), class action complaint, ECF No. 1 (filed 10 July 2026)
- Google’s reply letter on transfer, ECF No. 26 (10 August 2026)
- BOE, Spanish Intellectual Property Act (Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996), Articles 43 and 45, consolidated text
- Directive (EU) 2019/790 (DSM Directive), Article 4 (17 April 2019)
- AI Act Explorer, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 53 (12 July 2024)
