Four years ago, the online song lyrics database Genius, fka Rap Genius, accused Google of posting information from their site directly into Google search results. By the end of the year, Genius had sued Google, claiming that the company and its affiliate LyricFind, which provides the lyrics seen in Google search results, were directly copying exclusive material from Genius via scraping technology. Genius even suggested that it had discovered a secret code in Google’s use of different kinds of apostrophes that spelled out “REDHANDED” in Morse code.

Google has prevailed over Genius in multiple instances since then, but via appeals, the case made it all the way to the brink of the Supreme Court. However, as Billboard reports, the court has chosen not to take up the case. Genius had argued that a previous court ruling dismissing the case was “unjust” and “absurd,” but the Supreme Court denied the petition. Such is the fate of about 98% of the 7,000 submissions the court receives each year.

Genius lost the most recent ruling in 2022 because it is not attempting to protect any intellectual property, just the time and money spent compiling “authoritative” versions of lyrics — work that was then being “exploited” by Google. The court ruled that Genius’ case was “preempted” by federal copyright law because its argument was so similar to a copyright infringement claim that it could only be filed that way. And by that standard, Genius’ case fails.