Hachette et al. v. Google is a class-action copyright lawsuit filed July 10, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by publishers Hachette Book Group, Elsevier, and Cengage Learning, together with novelist Scott Turow, against Google. The complaint, which became public on July 14, 2026, alleges that Google copied millions of books and journal articles to train its Gemini models, including works the parties had submitted for scanning under the earlier Google Books settlement framework (Source: publishersweekly.com; thewrap.com).
Infobox
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Plaintiffs | Hachette Book Group, Elsevier, Cengage Learning, Scott Turow |
| Defendant | Google LLC |
| Court | U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York |
| Filed | July 10, 2026 |
| Relief sought | Injunction; statutory damages |
| Status | Active (last checked July 15, 2026) |
Background
The plaintiff group substantially overlaps with the plaintiffs in Hachette et al. v. Meta (and Mark Zuckerberg), the May 2026 class action against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg over Llama training data; Hachette, Elsevier, Cengage, and Turow appear in both suits. The Google complaint adds a distinctive element: it alleges that some of the copied works were ones the publishers had made available to Google for the Google Books project under the parties' earlier settlement, and that Google repurposed those copies for generative-AI training (Source: publishersweekly.com).
Claims
The complaint (Class Action Complaint, Hachette Book Group et al. v. Google LLC (S.D.N.Y., July 10, 2026)) pleads reproduction as three separable acts, each a distinct count, so that a defence to one does not resolve the others: copying works obtained "for strictly limited purposes in connection with Google Books and other Google services"; downloading web-scraped datasets "including from known pirate sources and from behind legitimate paywalls"; and reproduction in developing and training the models, which the complaint alleges continues "from model to model" with each new release. A fourth count is brought under the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. § 1202(b), for removal or alteration of copyright management information, alleged to have made it "more difficult to identify, trace, and attribute the works used in Defendants' systems."
The internal-document allegation is quoted at paragraph 60: Google "flagged internally that using 'Publisher Provided [] copyrighted books' from Google Play Books in connection with its AI was 'highly problematic for Google,' warning of '$10Bs-$100Bs in potential fines,'" and identified the risk that "Book publishers [are] likely to see LLM training on their books as copyright infringement. Could withdraw their content from Google Play Books file a lawsuit against Google" (Class Action Complaint, Hachette Book Group et al. v. Google LLC (S.D.N.Y., July 10, 2026)).
The defined scope of "the Gemini Models" reaches "all versions, iterations, and relatives of LaMDA, PaLM, Bard, and Gemini," with the affected products enumerated across Search, Cloud, Gmail, Docs, Ads, Chrome, YouTube, Workspace, and Vertex AI among others. The harm theory is output substitution as well as unauthorized copying — the complaint's illustration is that Gemini can produce a 100-page murder mystery substituting for a copyrighted one "in 20 minutes for a mere $0.39" — alongside displacement of legitimate sales and usurpation of the AI licensing market. Plaintiffs seek an injunction against continued use of the works plus statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), or actual damages and profits at their election, and fees under § 505 (Class Action Complaint, Hachette Book Group et al. v. Google LLC (S.D.N.Y., July 10, 2026)).
The proposed class covers owners of registered copyrights in any book with an ISBN or journal article with a DOI or ISSN reproduced by Google through any of the three routes, limited to works registered with the Copyright Office either within five years of publication and before Google's reproduction, or within three months of publication (Class Action Complaint, Hachette Book Group et al. v. Google LLC (S.D.N.Y., July 10, 2026)).
Current status
The complaint was filed July 10, 2026 and became publicly reported July 13–14, 2026. No responsive pleading had been reported as of July 15, 2026.
Relationships
- litigates: Google DeepMind — defendant
- related: Hachette et al. v. Meta (and Mark Zuckerberg) — same publisher-led plaintiff group against Meta, filed May 2026
- related: NYT v. Microsoft, OpenAI et al. — parallel premium-publisher AI-training case
- related: AI Copyright — concept-level frame
- related: AI Copyright Litigation — Analysis — comparative tracking of AI copyright suits