AI Copyright Cases

On one timeline

Every decision

1. 29 Sep 2026
   United States · courtUS Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Restrepo, Montgomery-Reeves, Bove): Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, No. 25-2153, Opinion of the CourtThe appeals court affirmed partial summary judgment for Thomson Reuters, holding that Westlaw's 2,243 headnotes are original enough for copyright and that Ross's use of them to train a competing AI legal-research platform was not fair use. It said Ross's tool, unlike the generative models in Bartz and In re OpenAI, cannot generate original expression.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
2. 16 Sep 2026
   United States · courtUS Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Thomas, Miller, Blumenfeld): Doe v. GitHub, Inc., No. 24-7700, OpinionThe appeals court affirmed dismissal of programmers' DMCA claim against GitHub, Microsoft and OpenAI, holding that Copilot and Codex do not 'remove or alter' copyright management information from copies of existing code but create new works that never contained it. It found the programmers had standing to sue.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
3. 31 Jul 2026
   Germany · courtLandgericht München I (Munich Regional Court I), 42nd Civil Chamber, judgment of 31 July 2026, Az. 42 O 763/25 (GEMA v Suno)The Munich court largely granted GEMA's claims for an injunction, information and damages against Suno over six songs, finding them memorised in Suno's v3.5 and v4 models stored on servers in Germany, a reproduction not covered by the section 44b TDM exception, and that Suno was responsible for outputs reproducing them. Applying US law to the training copies made in the USA, it held they were not fair use under 17 U.S.C. section 107, distinguishing Bartz and Kadrey.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
4. 24 Jul 2026
   India · courtHigh Court of Delhi, Justice Amit Bansal: ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v Open AI OpCo LLC, CS(COMM) 1028/2024, I.A. 45300/2024 (judgment of 24 July 2026)The Delhi High Court refused ANI's application for an interim injunction against OpenAI, taking the prima facie view that storing ANI's articles to train the LLMs behind ChatGPT is fair dealing under section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act and that ChatGPT's outputs were not substantially similar to ANI's works. It found ANI had not shown memorisation or regurgitation, and rejected OpenAI's objection that the court lacked jurisdiction.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
5. 20 Jul 2026
   United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin: Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, Order Granting Final Approval of Class Action Settlement; Judgment (Dkt. 680)The court gave final approval to Anthropic's non-reversionary US$1.5 billion settlement with authors and publishers, about US$3,000 per work across 482,460 works, and entered judgment. Claims covered 91.3% of listed works, 350 valid opt-outs were received, and fees were cut to US$101,561,111 from the 12.5% (US$187.5 million) requested.VerifiedsettlementOfficial document →
6. 5 May 2026
   United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Jon S. Tigar: Nazemian v. NVIDIA Corp., No. 24-cv-01454-JST, Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion to Dismiss (Dkt. 303)The court let authors pursue claims that NVIDIA trained Megatron and other models on pirated copies of their books from shadow libraries, and that it contributed to customers' infringement by supplying tools to download 'the Pile' dataset. It dismissed the vicarious infringement claim with leave to amend.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
7. 21 Apr 2026
   United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Charles R. Breyer: In re Mosaic LLM Litigation, No. 24-cv-01451-CRB, Order Denying Motions to Dismiss and Strike (Dkt. 288)The court let authors pursue a direct infringement claim that Databricks copied their books to build its DBRX models, after evidence from discovery was added to the complaint, refusing to dismiss the claim or strike the DBRX allegations.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
8. 15 Dec 2025
   United States · courtUS District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Sidney H. Stein: In re OpenAI (Ziff Davis v. OpenAI), Opinion and Order on motion to dismiss the First Amended Complaint (Dkt. 968)The court held that robots.txt files are not a technological measure that controls access to works, so OpenAI's crawling despite them was not circumvention under the DMCA, and dismissed that claim and an unjust enrichment claim. It let Ziff Davis's contributory infringement and two copyright management information claims proceed.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
9. 10 Dec 2025
   Germany · courtHanseatisches Oberlandesgericht (Hamburg Higher Regional Court), 5th Civil Senate, judgment of 10 December 2025, Az. 5 U 104/24The Hamburg Higher Regional Court dismissed the photographer's appeal, holding LAION could rely on the general text and data mining exception (section 44b) because the picture agency's opt-out was not machine-readable, and that the copying was also covered by the scientific research exception (section 60d). The court allowed a further appeal to the Federal Court of Justice.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
10. 24 Nov 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Margaret M. Garnett: Huckabee et al. v. Bloomberg L.P., No. 1:23-cv-09152, Opinion and Order (Dkt. 98)The court refused to dismiss authors' claim that Bloomberg infringed their books by training BloombergGPT on the Books3 dataset, holding that Bloomberg's fair use defence could not be decided at the pleading stage.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
11. 13 Nov 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Colleen McMahon: Advance Local Media et al. v. Cohere Inc., No. 25-cv-1305, Decision and Order Denying Defendant's Partial Motion to Dismiss (Dkt. 59)The court refused to dismiss 14 publishers' claims against Cohere, holding that 'substitutive summaries' of their articles produced by Cohere's Command models can support direct infringement, and letting the secondary infringement and trademark claims proceed.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
12. 11 Nov 2025
    Germany · courtLandgericht München I (Munich Regional Court I), 42nd Civil Chamber, judgment of 11 November 2025, Az. 42 O 14139/24 (GEMA v OpenAI)The Munich court largely granted GEMA's claims for an injunction, information and damages against two OpenAI companies, finding the lyrics of nine German songs were memorised in the GPT-4 and GPT-4o models and reproduced in ChatGPT outputs. It held memorisation in the model is not text and data mining under section 44b and that OpenAI, not users, is responsible for the outputs; a personality-rights claim was dismissed.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
13. 4 Nov 2025
    United Kingdom · courtHigh Court of England and Wales (Chancery Division, Intellectual Property List), Mrs Justice Joanna Smith: Getty Images v Stability AI [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch)After trial, the High Court dismissed Getty Images' secondary copyright infringement claim: although an 'article' can be intangible, an AI model such as Stable Diffusion that does not store or reproduce any copyright works (and never has) is not an 'infringing copy'. Getty succeeded in part on trade marks, for iStock and Getty watermarks generated by earlier v1.x and v2.x models, findings the judge called 'both historic and extremely limited in scope'.VerifiedjudgmentOfficial document →
14. 27 Oct 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Sidney H. Stein: In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, No. 25-md-3143, Opinion and Order (Dkt. 701)The court refused to dismiss the authors' class claim that ChatGPT's outputs infringe their books, holding that summaries and an outline of an alternative sequel drawn from works such as 'A Song of Ice and Fire' could be found substantially similar. It expressed no view on fair use.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
15. 6 Oct 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Eumi K. Lee: Concord Music Group v. Anthropic PBC, Order Denying Motion to Dismiss First Amended Complaint (Dkt. 461)The court refused to dismiss the music publishers' amended claims that Anthropic is secondarily liable for users' infringement through Claude's outputs of their lyrics and that it removed copyright management information, after dismissing earlier versions of those claims with leave to amend.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
16. 11 Sep 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Eumi K. Lee: In re Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation, No. 23-cv-03440-EKL, Order Granting Motion to Dismiss in Part (Dkt. 216)The court dismissed with prejudice 10 artists' and authors' direct infringement claims over 10 Google models, including Veo, Gemma and Chirp, and the vicarious infringement claim against Alphabet. Claims over other models, including Gemini, were not dismissed.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
17. 10 Jul 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge J. Paul Oetken: Lehrman v. Lovo, Inc., No. 24-cv-3770, Opinion and Order (Dkt. 45)In two voice actors' case against AI voice company Lovo, the court held that copyright and trademark law mostly do not protect a voice itself, dismissing most of those claims, but let Linnea Sage's copyright claim over use of her original recording proceed along with New York voice-misappropriation, consumer protection and contract claims. The claim over training the Genny model on their recordings was dismissed with leave to amend.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
18. 25 Jun 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Vince Chhabria: Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, No. 23-cv-03417-VC, Order Denying the Plaintiffs' Motion for Partial Summary Judgment and Granting Meta's Cross-Motion (Dkt. 598)The court granted Meta summary judgment that training its Llama models on 13 authors' books, downloaded from shadow libraries, was fair use on this record, because the authors made the wrong market-harm arguments and offered no evidence of market dilution. The judge said the ruling does not mean Meta's use is lawful and affects only these 13 authors.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
19. 23 Jun 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge William Alsup: Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, No. C 24-05417 WHA, Order on Fair Use (Dkt. 231)The court granted Anthropic summary judgment that training its large language models on books was fair use, and that scanning purchased print books into digital files was also fair use. It refused summary judgment on the more than seven million pirated books Anthropic kept in a central library, sending those copies to trial.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
20. 21 Apr 2025
    China · courtShanghai Jiading District People's Court: (2024) Hu 0114 Min Chu No. 1326 (Chen v a Shanghai network technology company), published by the Supreme People's Court as a 2024 typical IP caseThe court held that an app operator's AI face-swap versions of 13 short videos, identical to the plaintiff's audiovisual works except for the faces, infringed his copyright and were neither original adaptation nor fair use, rejecting a technology-neutrality defence. It awarded 7,500 yuan for losses and costs against a claim of 48,000 yuan plus 2,000 yuan; neither side appealed.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
21. 4 Apr 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Sidney H. Stein: The New York Times Co. v. Microsoft Corp. et al. (with Daily News v. Microsoft and Center for Investigative Reporting v. OpenAI), Opinion (Dkt. 514)The court let the New York Times and other newspapers proceed with direct infringement claims against OpenAI, including for conduct more than three years old, and with contributory infringement claims against OpenAI and Microsoft. It dismissed misappropriation claims and CIR's 'abridgment' claim with prejudice, and most DMCA claims without prejudice.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
22. 25 Mar 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Eumi K. Lee: Concord Music Group v. Anthropic PBC, No. 24-cv-03811-EKL, Order Denying Motion for Preliminary Injunction (Dkt. 321)The court refused eight music publishers' request to bar Anthropic from using their song lyrics to train its AI models, finding the requested relief too broad and the publishers' evidence not enough to show likely irreparable harm. It did not decide the infringement claims or Anthropic's fair use defence.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
23. 18 Mar 2025
    United States · courtUS Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (Millett, Wilkins, Rogers): Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233, Opinion of the CourtThe appeals court affirmed the refusal to register Thaler's AI-made image, holding that the Copyright Act of 1976 requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being, so the 'Creativity Machine' cannot be an author. It did not decide whether the Constitution itself requires human authorship.VerifiedauthorshipOfficial document →
24. 11 Feb 2025
    United States · courtUS District Court for the District of Delaware, Judge Stephanos Bibas (sitting by designation): Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, No. 1:20-cv-613-SB, Memorandum Opinion and OrderRevising his 2023 summary judgment opinion, the judge granted Thomson Reuters partial summary judgment: Ross infringed 2,243 Westlaw headnotes by using them to build its AI legal-search tool, and its fair use defence failed. Ross's own motions for summary judgment were denied.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
25. 7 Nov 2024
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Colleen McMahon: Raw Story Media v. OpenAI, No. 1:24-cv-01514, Decision and Order granting motion to dismiss (Dkt. 117)The court dismissed Raw Story's and AlterNet's claims that OpenAI removed copyright management information from their articles when building ChatGPT's training sets, finding they had not shown a concrete injury giving them standing to sue, and refused leave to replead on the existing record.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
26. 27 Sep 2024
    Germany · courtLandgericht Hamburg (Regional Court), judgment of 27 September 2024, Az. 310 O 227/23 (Kneschke v LAION e.V.)The Hamburg Regional Court dismissed a professional photographer's claim against LAION, a non-profit association that downloaded his photograph while building a free dataset of image-text pairs for training AI, holding the copying was permitted by the text and data mining exception for scientific research (section 60d of the German Copyright Act).VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
27. 12 Aug 2024
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge William H. Orrick: Andersen v. Stability AI, Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motions to Dismiss First Amended Complaint (Dkt. 223)The court let the artists' Copyright Act claims proceed against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI, and a Lanham Act claim against Midjourney. It dismissed the DMCA claims with prejudice and the unjust enrichment claims with leave to amend.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
28. 12 Feb 2024
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin: Tremblay v. OpenAI (with Silverman v. OpenAI), Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part the Motions to Dismiss (Dkt. 104)The court dismissed the authors' vicarious infringement claim because they had not alleged any ChatGPT output substantially similar to their books, along with DMCA, negligence and unjust enrichment claims and parts of the unfair competition claim, with leave to amend. OpenAI had not sought to dismiss the direct infringement claim.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
29. 1 Dec 2023
    United Kingdom · courtHigh Court of England and Wales (Chancery Division, Intellectual Property List), Mrs Justice Joanna Smith: Getty Images (US) Inc & Ors v Stability AI Ltd [2023] EWHC 3090 (Ch)The High Court refused Stability AI's application for summary judgment on Getty Images' claim over the training and development of Stable Diffusion, finding the claim had a real prospect of success and must go to trial. It also declined to strike out the secondary infringement claim, leaving the meaning of 'article' under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be decided at trial.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
30. 27 Nov 2023
    China · courtBeijing Internet Court: Civil Judgment (2023) Jing 0491 Min Chu No. 11279 (Li v Liu)The Beijing Internet Court held that an image the plaintiff generated with Stable Diffusion through his choice of prompts and parameters was an artwork protected by copyright and that he, not the AI, was its author. It ordered the defendant, who used the image without permission and removed the watermark, to apologise and pay 500 yuan of the 5,000 yuan claimed.VerifiedauthorshipOfficial document →
31. 20 Nov 2023
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Vince Chhabria: Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, No. 3:23-cv-03417, Order granting motion to dismiss (Dkt. 56)The court dismissed the authors' claims that Meta's LLaMA models are themselves infringing derivative works and that every output infringes, along with DMCA, unfair competition and unjust enrichment claims (with leave to amend) and a negligence claim (without leave). Meta had not sought to dismiss the core claim that copying the books for training infringed.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
32. 30 Oct 2023
    United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge William H. Orrick: Andersen v. Stability AI, No. 3:23-cv-00201-WHO, Order on Motions to Dismiss and Strike (Dkt. 117)In the artists' case over Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and DeviantArt, the court dismissed every claim with leave to amend except Sarah Andersen's direct copyright infringement claim against Stability AI.VerifiedrulingOfficial document →
33. 11 Oct 2023
    Czech Republic · courtMěstský soud v Praze (Prague Municipal Court), Judge Filip Liška: judgment č. j. 10 C 13/2023-16The Prague Municipal Court dismissed a claim to be declared author of an image generated by AI from the claimant's prompt and to have a law firm remove it from its website, because he did not prove the prompt. It added that an AI-generated image is not a copyright work, as it is not the unique result of a natural person's creative activity, and that a prompt is at most an idea or subject matter.VerifiedauthorshipOfficial document →
34. 18 Aug 2023
    United States · courtUS District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Beryl A. Howell: Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 22-1564, Memorandum OpinionThe court upheld the Copyright Office's refusal to register 'A Recent Entrance to Paradise', an image Stephen Thaler said his 'Creativity Machine' made on its own, and granted the Office summary judgment. It held that human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.VerifiedauthorshipOfficial document →

Related, not counted

1. 7 Sep 2026
   ChinaSupreme People's Court: Opinions on Lawfully Hearing Cases Involving Artificial Intelligence Disputes (Fa Fa [2026] No. 10)China's Supreme People's Court issued 24 articles of guidance for AI cases. Where AI-generated content infringes copyright, courts weigh the service type, training data sources and each party's role, and an AI developer that denies infringement can be ordered to produce its training data sources, training records and how the model runs.VerifiedOfficial document →
2. 1 Sep 2026
   United StatesUS Department of Justice: Statement of Interest of the United States, In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, No. 25-md-3143The US Government told the court that training large language models on written works is 'exceedingly transformative' and should be fair use, citing the Bartz and Kadrey rulings, as cross-motions for summary judgment on fair use were being filed.VerifiedOfficial document →
3. 23 Apr 2026
   United States · courtUS District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Trina L. Thompson: Getty Images (US) v. Stability AI, No. 25-cv-06891-TLT, Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion to Dismiss (Dkt. 53)The court dismissed Getty's false copyright management information claim against Stability AI with leave to amend and let its trademark and unfair competition claims proceed. Stability AI had not moved to dismiss the copyright infringement claim.VerifiedOfficial document →
4. 2 Mar 2026
   United States · courtSupreme Court of the United States: Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 25-449, order listThe Supreme Court denied Stephen Thaler's petition for certiorari, leaving the D.C. Circuit's human-authorship ruling in place.VerifiedOfficial document →
5. 16 Dec 2025
   United Kingdom · courtHigh Court of England and Wales, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith: Getty Images (US) Inc & Ors v Stability AI Ltd [2025] EWHC 3343 (Ch)The judge granted Getty Images permission to appeal on all grounds of its secondary copyright infringement claim, calling the meaning of 'infringing copy' for an AI model a novel and important point of law, and refused Stability AI permission to appeal the trade mark findings.VerifiedOfficial document →
6. 13 Nov 2025
   China · courtBeijing Internet Court: Individual penalized for making false claims about an AI-generated picture to influence trial proceedingsThe Beijing Internet Court dismissed a copyright claim over a photo that showed clear signs of being AI-generated, after the claimant admitted his account of how it was made was false and could not prove lawful title, and fined him 10,000 yuan for false statements.VerifiedOfficial document →
7. 26 Aug 2025
   JapanNikkei Inc. news release: 生成AI事業者を著作権侵害で共同提訴 (joint lawsuit with The Asahi Shimbun against Perplexity AI)Nikkei and The Asahi Shimbun sued Perplexity AI in the Tokyo District Court, alleging it copied and stored their articles without permission and has shown them in answers since about June 2024, ignoring robots.txt. Each paper claims 2.2 billion yen and seeks injunctions and deletion of stored articles.VerifiedOfficial document →
8. 9 Jul 2025
   China · courtHangzhou Internet Court (first instance), affirmed by Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court; reported by the Supreme People's CourtIn what the Supreme People's Court calls the first case of a generative AI platform's outputs infringing the right of communication over information networks, the Hangzhou Internet Court held an AI company liable as a contributory infringer, ordered it to stop at once and to pay the rights holder 30,000 yuan for losses and reasonable costs. The Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court upheld the judgment on appeal.VerifiedOfficial document →
9. 9 May 2025
   United StatesUS Copyright Office: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 3: Generative AI Training (pre-publication version)The Copyright Office released a pre-publication version of its report on generative AI training, analysing when copying works to train models infringes and when it may be fair use.VerifiedOfficial document →
10. 29 Jan 2025
    United StatesUS Copyright Office: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: CopyrightabilityThe Register of Copyrights reported that material generated by AI is protected only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements, and that prompts alone do not give enough control to make the user an author.VerifiedOfficial document →
11. 27 Dec 2023
    United States · courtThe New York Times Company: Complaint, The New York Times Co. v. Microsoft Corp. et al., S.D.N.Y. No. 1:23-cv-11195The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging their models were built by copying millions of its copyrighted articles and seeking to hold them responsible for billions of dollars in damages.VerifiedOfficial document →