March 13 (Reuters) - News Corp ( NWSA ) has been sued by

Google search engine rival Brave Software, which seeks to

forestall a lawsuit by Rupert Murdoch's company for when readers

are directed to copyrighted articles from the Wall Street

Journal and New York Post.

In a Wednesday night complaint filed in San Francisco

federal court, Brave said News Corp ( NWSA ) sent a cease-and-desist

letter threatening litigation and demanding compensation for the

alleged misappropriation of copyrighted articles by "scraping"

its websites and indexing their content.

Brave countered that it is "fair use" to index website

content, "which all search engine operators must do to exist."

It also accused News Corp ( NWSA ) of threatening to disrupt advances

in generative artificial intelligence, saying chatbots such as

OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini rely on search engine

responses.

Brave, based in San Francisco, said its Brave Search has

less than 1% of the search market, with Google commanding nearly

90% and Microsoft's ( MSFT ) Bing much of the rest.

"Defendants, which partner with Google, seek to bully Brave

out of the market and push the market's already-high barriers to

entry infinitely higher," Brave said.

News Corp ( NWSA ) did not immediately respond to requests for

comment on Thursday. Its British, Australian and Dow Jones

operations are also defendants.

In October, News Corp ( NWSA ) sued the startup Perplexity AI for

alleged "massive" illegal copying of its articles.

Brave's lawsuit joined the intensifying battle pitting

publishers against technology companies that want to use

copyrighted content without authorization to support AI.

In its February 27 cease-and-desist letter, News Corp ( NWSA ) said

Brave markets itself as committed to "fight Big Tech's terrible

privacy issues," but acts differently.

"Brave monetizes its widescale theft of intellectual

property by selling the purloined content to some of the very

same tech companies it publicly derides," News Corp ( NWSA ) said.

"In so doing, Brave harms content creators, including the

innumerable journalists, editors, and other staff responsible

for producing high-quality content," it added.

Brave's lawsuit seeks a declaration that using copyrighted

News Corp ( NWSA ) articles that can be bundled into search indexes that

can be licensed and sold is not copyright infringement.