Genius doesn’t have a copyright claim because it doesn’t own the lyrics. Both Genius and Google hold licenses from music publishers to print song lyrics, which makes the lawsuit trickier, focusing more on how Google and its partners got the lyrics to begin with.
That makes sense, but that license surely wouldn’t include independent artists that do not have a publisher. Then again, independent artists most likely do not have the means to take legal action, or at least the outcome wouldn’t justify the expense, so I suppose that point is moot.
Music licensing (at least in the US) often involves blanket licenses that cover all music, without requiring consent or knowledge of the rightsholder(s). There's usually a designated administrative company, such as ASCAP, that royalties are paid to in absence of more specific agreements, and they divy them up. In this arrangement, for covered uses, generally rightsholders have no claim against the company, if it followed the forms, they would need to take it up with the administrative agency.
Except Google licenses from companies who don't do it legally, and didn't cease when they were notified. They didn't stop after a WSJ article. On top of it, once the watermark was disclosed, they removed it.
Google licenses from a number of places, including LyricFind. Which, I don't think, is a music publisher.
I offer that to correct a mistake, knowing it doesn't invalidate your point. Reading the complaint, it sounds like it's a ToS violation. The interesting thing is that Google -> Genius have some business agreements (Genius is an adsense customer, at the least).
To my Not A Lawyer brain, that moves it out of the "scraping public documents is fine" and into a more complicated relationship. The outcome of this lawsuit will be interesting!
Google licenses from the same music publishers. They have to or they wouldn't be able to display the lyrics.
Just having a license doesn't necessarily give you the actual lyrics though. They still have to create or buy them from somebody.
In the past I think LyricFind said that when they licensed lyrics, some were provided by the publisher and it was the publisher that scraped them from Genius. I may be mis-remembering that, but there was something along those lines.
I think this is an issue of Genius alleging that LyricFind scraped their website with is a ToS violation.
(I’m aware this lawsuit isn’t about copyright, I’m just curious)