Britannica, Merriam‑Webster Sue Perplexity for Copyright Infringement

13 Sep 2025 The centuries‑old publisher Encyclopedia Britannica and its Merriam‑Webster dictionary have sued AI search company Perplexity in New York federal court, filing the case on September 10. According to the complaint, Britannica alleges Perplexity’s “answer engine” scrapes content from its sites, diverts web traffic, and reproduces copyrighted definitions and other material without permission. The suit also claims trademark infringement when Perplexity attributes hallucinated or incomplete answers to Britannica or Merriam‑Webster — the complaint highlights a back‑to‑back screenshot showing Perplexity’s result matching Merriam‑Webster’s definition of “plagiarize.” Perplexity — which markets itself as an AI search competitor to Google and has been backed by investors including Jeff Bezos — has faced similar disputes with outlets such as Forbes, The New York Times, and the BBC. It has been accused of “stealth crawling” sites that block bots and of republishing original content without adequate sourcing. Some publishers participate in Perplexity’s ad revenue‑sharing program (Time and the Los Angeles Times among them), and World History Encyclopedia recently joined that publisher program and launched a Perplexity‑powered chatbot on September 8 to let users search its sources and academic articles. Source