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Google secures a major win against Penske Media as a federal judge dismisses claims that the tech giant unlawfully used their content in its AI-generated summaries.
A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits from education technology company Chegg and Penske Media that alleged Google unlawfully used their content in AI-generated summaries, drawing readers away from their websites. It’s a major win for Google, which previously secured a dismissal from the court regarding a lawsuit filed against the tech giant by a publisher.
Penske and Chegg argued in their filings last year that Google had violated antitrust law by forcing publishers to allow AI overviews of their content to remain indexed in Google’s search results. The companies claimed they had lost significant revenue from the resulting reduction in traffic to their sites.
But U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that current antitrust laws do not cover AI-generated search summaries. At the same time, the judge acknowledged the economic dislocation and uncompensated “zero-click” wasteland for publishers, which Mehta said must be addressed by lawmakers, not the courts.
“Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an ‘expectation’ that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free,” wrote Judge Mehta. “But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works.”
Chegg and Penske argued that in a competitive market, Google would pay them for republishing their work or using their published content to train its AI systems. In response, Google claimed that it is under no obligation to index publishers’ content on their preferred terms.
“[Penske] and its counsel are now on their fourth complaint challenging the same alleged conduct based on substantially the same legal theories,” Google argued in its dismissal filing. “[Penske’s amended complaint] addresses none of the dispositive defects Google has repeatedly highlighted across its two motions to dismiss in [Chegg’s lawsuit] and prior motion to dismiss.”
Judge Mehta stressed that he is not “unsympathetic” to the publishers’ plight but that current antitrust laws do not address “innovation” that might cause economic harm, such as artificial intelligence. Mehta was the same judge to reject similar claims by a publisher who was also suing Google over AI-generated summaries.
Penske, which publishes Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, and many more, did not provide an immediate response to media requests for comment.