{"id":1169,"date":"2025-09-12T21:23:34","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/encyclopedia-britannica-and-merriam-webster-sue-perplexity-ai-for-copyright-and-trademark-infringement\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T21:23:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:23:34","slug":"encyclopedia-britannica-and-merriam-webster-sue-perplexity-ai-for-copyright-and-trademark-infringement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/encyclopedia-britannica-and-merriam-webster-sue-perplexity-ai-for-copyright-and-trademark-infringement\/","title":{"rendered":"Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sue Perplexity AI for copyright and trademark infringement\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The AI web search company Perplexity<\/a> is being hit by another lawsuit<\/a> alleging copyright and trademark infringement, this time from Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster. Britannica, the centuries-old publisher that owns Merriam-Webster, sued<\/a> Perplexity in New York federal court on September 10th.<\/p>\n

In the lawsuit, the companies allege<\/a> that Perplexity\u2019s \u201canswer engine\u201d scrapes their websites, steals their internet traffic, and plagiarizes their copyrighted material. Britannica also alleges trademark infringement when Perplexity attaches the two companies\u2019 names to hallucinated or incomplete content.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The word \u201cplagiarize\u201d illustrates the point of the lawsuit. The court document includes back-to-back screenshots that show Perplexity\u2019s result is identical to Merriam-Webster\u2019s definition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perplexity positions itself as a Google Search competitor<\/a>. It has been called a \u201cbullshit machine<\/a>\u201d that steals and recreates<\/a> original content without proper citations. The AI company is also accused of \u201cstealth crawling<\/a>\u201d websites with crawler blockers, a practice<\/a> used by other AI companies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perplexity, backed by investors like Jeff Bezos<\/a>, has tussled with other media outlets like Forbes<\/em><\/a>, The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, and the BBC<\/a>. News Corp, the parent company of outlets like The Wall Street Journal<\/em> and the New York Post<\/em>, sued Perplexity in October 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some media companies joined<\/a> Perplexity\u2019s ad revenue sharing program<\/a>,<\/em> including Time<\/em> magazine and the Los Angeles Times<\/em>. Another popular encyclopedia, World History Encyclopedia, joined Perplexity\u2019s publisher program<\/a>, and on September 8th, it launched a Perplexity-powered AI chatbot<\/a> that allows users to sift through the encyclopedia\u2019s database of sources and academic articles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

View Link<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The AI web search company Perplexity is being hit by another lawsuit alleging copyright and trademark infringement, this time from […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}