Perplexity, the AI web search company, has found itself amidst yet another lawsuit alleging infringement of both copyright and trademark. The fresh round of legal trouble comes from a combined suit launched by Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster. The historic publisher, Encyclopedia Britannica, which also owns Merriam-Webster, formally filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in a New York federal court on September 10th.<\/p>\n
%p>According to the details provided in the lawsuit, both companies claim that Perplexity’s “answer engine” perpetrates several infractions. These range from scraping their websites, robbing them of valuable internet traffic, to plagiarizing their copyrighted material. To compound these allegations, Britannica throws in the claim of trademark infringement, arguing Perplexity is erroneously attaching both companies’ names to incomplete or false content.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An elucidating example is the word “plagiarize,” whose role serves to illustrate the charges underlining the lawsuit. As part of the lawsuit, the companies released successive screenshots showing Perplexity’s provided definition to be identical to that found on Merriam-Webster’s website.<\/p>\n
Perplexity has made its name by trying to position itself as a direct competitor to Google Search. Unfortunately, this has earned the company some unflattering descriptions, such as a “bullshit machine,” given that it allegedly steals and recreates original content without proper citations. The company has also found itself accused of performing “stealth crawling” on websites that employ crawler blockers, a practice that seems commonplace among other AI companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the controversy, Perplexity has managed to garner backing from notable investors , like Jeff Bezos, and is no stranger to tussles with other media titans. The search engine has brushed with media outlets like Forbes<\/em>, The New York Times<\/em>, and the BBC<\/em>. In October 2024, even News Corp – the parent company to the likes of The Wall Street Journal<\/em> and the New York Post<\/em> – filed a lawsuit against Perplexity for copyright infringement.<\/p>\n Interestingly enough, some media companies have elected to participate in Perplexity’s ad revenue sharing program. The list includes names like Time<\/em> Magazine and the Los Angeles Times<\/em>. Even the World History Encyclopedia, another prominent encyclopedia, is a member of Perplexity’s publisher program and has recently launched a Perplexity-powered AI chatbot . The chatbot permits users to trawl through the encyclopedia’s comprehensive database of sources and scholarly articles.<\/p>\n Regardless of the veracity of the allegations leveled against it, Perplexity will have to navigate the rocky legal waters that lie ahead. In the meantime, the online world eagerly awaits the case’s outcomes and their potential implications on AI web search companies.<\/p>\n