San Francisco, Dec 4 (IANS): Lyrics website Genius has filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that the latter copied lyrics from its song-annotation platform. Genius alleged that Googles practices are anti-competitive, and its lawsuit asks for $50 million in damages from the tech giant and a partner.

In the suit, Genius claims that the lyric licensing company LyricFind pulled lyrics from Genius' pages, and that Google used those lyrics in its search result displays, Gizmodo reported on Tuesday quoting the Wall Street Journal.

Genius, a platform that music fans can use to look up and annotate lyrics, said the tech giant has been copying its lyrics for years.

Genius first shared its hidden code and publicly accused Google of lifting lyrics five months ago.

As the lawsuit explains, Genius believes it caught Google and LyricFind by developing a unique watermark after it grew suspicious that Google was stealing the digital media company's content, the report added.