The AI Litigation Tracker: Updates on Key Media and Entertainment Generative AI Infringement Cases (as of 7/27/25)
Here are the latest updates on the key generative AI focused IP infringement-related litigations that impact media, entertainment, marketing and more (as of 7/27/25) — monitored, compiled, updated and tracked in depth by partner Avery Williams and the team at McKool Smith (just voted “Plaintiff Firm of the Year” by The National Law Journal and with the most “Top 100 Verdicts” in U.S.). McKool is rich both on the copyright and patent sides of the AI & IP equation. The most significant developments for the week are listed first.
1. Bartz v. Anthropic: Major Victory for Plaintiffs
Current Status: Judge William Alsup recently granted class certification for pirated books. Alsup ruled that Anthropic could not use the “fair use” defense to excuse downloading hundreds of thousands of books to form a digital library. These are his words:
The following LibGen & PiLiMi Pirated Books Class is CERTIFIED:
All beneficial or legal copyright owners of the exclusive right to Reproduce copies of any book in the versions of LibGen or PiLiMi downloaded by Anthropic. “Book” refers to any work possessing an ISBN or ASIN which was registered with the United States Copyright Office within five years of the work’s publication and which was registered with the United States Copyright Office before being downloaded by Anthropic, or within three months of publication. Excluded are the directors, officers and employees of Anthropic, personnel of federal agencies, and district court personnel.
This is a major victory for the plaintiffs. Class certification means that thousands of authors and copyright holders can join suit against Anthropic without individually incurring the massive costs of litigating this issue. There are hundreds of thousands of copyrighted works in these shadow libraries. With statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement, the damages can quickly become stratospheric. This should force Anthropic and other GenAI companies to consider a reasonable settlement strategy.
2. SDNY Multi-District Litigation
Background: Federal Judge Stein (Southern District of New York) is the multi-district litigation (MDL) judge for twelve high-profile generative AI cases. On April 3rd, the MDL panel consolidated the following cases for pretrial proceedings:
1. TREMBLAY, ET AL. v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL., C.A. No. 3:23−03223
2. SILVERMAN, ET AL. v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL., C.A. No. 3:23−03416
3. CHABON, ET AL. v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL., C.A. No. 3:23−04625
4. MILLETTE v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL., C.A. No. 5:24−04710Southern District of New York
5. AUTHORS GUILD, ET AL. v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL., C.A. No. 1:23−08292
6. ALTER, ET AL. v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL., C.A. No. 1:23−10211
7. THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, ET AL.,C.A. No. 1:23−11195
8. BASBANES, ET AL. v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, ET AL., C.A. No. 1:24−00084
9. RAW STORY MEDIA, INC., ET AL. v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL., C.A No. 1:24−01514*
10. THE INTERCEPT MEDIA, INC. v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL., C.A. No. 1:24−01515
11. DAILY NEWS LP, ET AL. v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, ET AL.,C.A. No. 1:24−03285
12. THE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING, INC. v. OPENAI, INC., ET AL.,C.A. No. 1:24−04872
DENIAL v. OPENAI, INC, MICROSOFT CORPORATION
Current Status: One discovery dispute resolved. Last week, the News Plaintiffs and OpenAI appear to have resolved their dispute regarding over-designated AEO documents. The parties submitted an Amended Stipulated Protective Order which allowed limited disclosure of documents to News executives, given that they did not fall into several restricted categories: (1) financial statements, (2) technical details, (3) licensing data, (4) customer contracts, (5) documents revealing enterprise pricing, (6) documents revealing strategies for development of customer/partner relations, and (7) a “safety valve” category that excludes certain sensitive documents that reveal trade secrets or other highly confidential information. The specific agreement can be found at paragraph 24(b) of the amended proposed order.
The News Plaintiffs also filed reply briefing regarding their motion to strike affirmative licensing defenses by Microsoft. Microsoft previously argued that it was not required to identify any particular licenses that form the basis for such defenses. Plaintiffs argued in response that without such identification, Microsoft could not satisfy notice requirements under Twombly. In support, Plaintiffs cited GEOMC Co. v. Calmare Therapeutics Inc., in which the 2nd Circuit affirmed the need for “some factual allegations to make [affirmative defenses] plausible.” None of the cases Plaintiffs cite directly address the question of affirmative licensing defenses, so it remains to be seen how Judge Stein will rule on this issue.
3. Denial v. OpenAI and Microsoft
Background: Authors Catherine Denial, Ian McDowell, and Steven Schwartz filed a class action suit in the Northern District of California against OpenAI and Microsoft. The basic facts closely mirror those alleged by the Kadrey plaintiffs against Meta (discussed below). However, the Denial Plaintiffs bring a wider array of claims, including direct and vicarious copyright infringement, unfair competition under California state law, violation of California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, violation of the DMCA, common law conversion, unjust enrichment, breach of contract as a third-party beneficiary, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, larceny/receipt of stolen property under the California Penal Code, and conspiracy to restrain trade.
The Complaint makes it clear that Defendants’ piracy of Plaintiffs’ works will be a central focus of the case. However, it does not immediately suggest that Plaintiffs are making a market dilution argument, despite the outcome of the Kadrey case. Nonetheless, it is likely that Plaintiffs will aim to establish facts to support such an argument given Judge Chhabria’s comments in Kadrey. The case has been assigned to Judge Edward Chen.
Current Status: Case transferred to SDNY. Last week the Multi-District Litigation panel in the Southern District of New York (discussed above) recognized that this case involves questions of fact that are similar to those alleged in other MDL cases such as the ones brought by The New York Times, Raw Story Media, and other News plaintiffs. Accordingly, this case has been transferred to SDNY to join the herd of other publishers pursuing action against OpenAI and Microsoft for their unauthorized use of Plaintiffs’ writing as training data. This probably means that Denial will take a backseat to the ongoing disputes spearheaded by the News Plaintiffs there. But stay tuned to find out if they manage to steal the limelight.
4. Kadrey et al. v. Meta: The Recent “Fair Use” Bombshell
Background: Author Richard Kadrey, comedian Silverman, and others sued Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta on July 7, 2023 in the U.S. District Court (Northern District of California) for mass infringement - i.e., unlicensed “training” of their generative AI model on millions of copyrighted works, including their own. Meta’s defense is “fair use.” The judge assigned is Judge Vince Chhabria.
At first, in November 2023, the Court dismissed the bulk of plaintiffs’ claims against Meta. But the Court gave plaintiffs a chance to amend their complaint to add a more direct link to actual harm - and they filed their amended complaint in December 2023.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. In the aftermath of Meta’s success on summary judgment regarding the use of books as training data, the parties submitted a joint case management statement. Plaintiffs’ position is that, because summary judgment only addressed the question of “fair use” with respect to the use of copyrighted material for LLM training, their claims for distribution of copyrighted material (i.e., by seeding torrents) should proceed. Plaintiffs contend that their single copyright infringement claim comprised both a “reproduction claim” and a “distribution claim,” the latter of which has yet to be adjudicated. There have been few developments on this so far.
5. Disney & Universal v. Midjourney
Background: Disney and Universal filed suit for copyright infringement against Midjourney, an AI image generation platform. This case is unique because, although the AI litigation battlefield has seen major plaintiffs in news media entities such as The New York Times, so far no major traditional Hollywood studio has entered the fray. Disney and Universal are alleging straightforward claims of direct and secondary copyright infringement based on Midjourney’s unlicensed use of copyrighted works for training its models, which lead to an ability to generate the unlicensed likeness of the Plaintiffs’ characters.
The copyright infringement in Disney and Universal’s complaint also stands out from that alleged by author and news plaintiffs in other cases because it relies on what could be considered “normal use” of the Midjourney product. The complaint is filled with examples of images depicting Marvel, Star Wars, and DreamWorks characters. These images were not generated in response to prompts crafted by attorneys preparing the complaint — they were generated by normal Midjourney users who wanted to see what Shrek would look like as a 1950s greaser, as an example.
The complaint incorporates all of the grievances we have already seen from other plaintiffs, such as the use of copyrighted material for training and the generation of works that seem to mirror copyrighted training data. However, Disney and Universal are uniquely positioned to argue that Midjourney is engaged in and profiting from the massive distribution of works that infringe their copyrights. The facts, combined with Disney’s behemoth status in the media industry, will likely lead to unique dynamics not seen in the other cases.
Current Status: No major substantive developments, just a routine extension. This week, Disney filed an agreed stipulation to extend time to file its Answer to August 6th, which is typical in litigation between large entities. So we should get something new in the next two weeks. Otherwise, this case is just getting started, so the last few weeks have seen an active docket as attorneys file their notices of appearances and the parties file initial disclosures with the Court.
6. The New York Times v. Microsoft & OpenAI
Background: On December 27, 2023, The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for copyright infringement and other related claims. The Times alleges that the companies used “millions” of its copyrighted articles to train their AI models without its consent. The Times claims this has resulted in economic harm by pulling users away from their paywalled content and impacting advertising revenue. The complaint alleges several causes of action, including copyright infringement, unfair competition, and trademark dilution. In its pleadings, The Times asserts that Microsoft and OpenAI are building a “market substitute” for its news and further that their AI generates “hallucinations” based on The Times’ articles also substantially damage its reputation and brand. The Times seeks “billions of dollars of statutory and actual damages.” Microsoft and OpenAI assert the defense of “fair use” - i.e., no license, payment or consent is needed.
On September 13, 2024, the Court granted a motion to consolidate the case with another brought by the Daily News and other publications (see the MDL discussion above in Summary 1). The judge assigned to the consolidated cases is Judge Sidney Stein.
Current Status: OpenAI objects to preservation order. As we discussed previously, the Court has maintained its order for OpenAI to preserve chat logs that would otherwise be deleted under its privacy policies, citing concerns that the same users who might use ChatGPT to circumvent The New York Times’ paywall protections would be more likely to request deletion of their chat logs. OpenAI has maintained its objections to this order.
In its Objection to Preservation Order, OpenAI raised three main arguments. First, that the preservation order does not serve a useful purpose because the idea that certain users attempt to “cover their tracks” is far-fetched. Second, they argued that the Order is not proportional to the needs of the case, because it would require OpenAI to make infrastructural changes to support the retention and would strain user trust in OpenAI. Finally, OpenAI argued that the preservation order was based on false premises, stating that OpenAI did not “destroy” any data, and certainly did not delete any data in response to litigation events.
OpenAI’s false-premises argument cites support from a non-public declaration, but it appears that OpenAI may be relying on a narrow distinction between “deleting” data (which it is arguing is needed to maintain customer trust) and “destroying” data which the News Plaintiffs could argue gives rise to adverse inference.
7. Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence
Background: On February 11th, 2025, in a case that comes tantalizingly close to deciding the issue of “fair use” in generative AI model training (with many taking the position that now that issue is firmly decided, as laid out below), Circuit Judge Bibas of the District of Delaware ruled that the “fair use” doctrine does not protect the use of West Headnotes in determining what to display as a result of a user query. Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence involves an AI search tool made by the now-defunct Ross Intelligence (“Ross”). Ross’ tool accepted user queries on legal questions and responded with relevant case law. To determine what cases to provide in response to user queries, Ross compared the user queries to “Bulk Memos” from LegalEase, which were written using Westlaw Headnotes. Boiling it down, when a user’s query contained language similar to a West Headnote, Ross’ tool would respond by providing the cases that the West Headnote related to.
While Ross’s tool was not a modern generative AI model (it didn’t use a transformer model or perform next-token prediction to generate unique output for queries), an important similarity exists between Ross’ use of West Headnotes and the way generative AI models train on other copyrighted materials. Ross’ tool did not actually reproduce the West Headnotes in response to a user’s query. Ross used the Headnotes just for “training,” that is, to determine what to produce in response to a user's query. It is easy to draw an analogy between Ross’ use of West Headnotes to determine what cases are responsive to a user’s query, and OpenAI’s use of The New York Times articles to determine how to respond to a question about politics (see the separate The New York Times case against OpenAI summary below). The technology is different, but the themes are similar.
In that context, the Court’s grant of summary judgment against Ross’ fair-use defense — as a matter of law — provides insight into how another court might rule in a generative AI training case. “Fair use” is based on four factors: (1) the purpose and character of the use, (2) the nature of the copyrighted work, (3) the amount of the work used, and (4) the potential impact on the market. The Thompson Reuters Court found that factors two and three favored Ross because of the low degree of creativity involved in carving out headnotes from cases, as well as the fact that Ross did not output the headnotes themselves but rather judicial opinions. However, factor one favored Thomson Reuters because of the commercial nature of Ross’ product and the fact that it was not transformative. The Court noted that Ross’ product was not generative AI, suggesting that a generative AI product could be more transformative than the simpler lexical searching tool that Ross made. Finally, the fourth factor and “undoubtedly the single most important element of fair use” favored Thomson Reuters because of the potential impact on Thomson Reuters’ ability to sell its own data for use in training AI if Ross’ use was permissible. On balance, the Court flatly rejected Ross’ “fair use” defense as a matter of law. That question will not go to a jury.
AI developers will undoubtedly focus on the issue of transformative-use in generative AI fair-use battles to come, but the “commercial use” and “market impact” factors will continue to favor content owners over generative AI companies. We have already seen several massive licensing deals where companies like Reuters and Reddit are profiting from the sale of their own data. If courts continue to favor the “market impact” factor as we see in Thompson Reuters, then OpenAI, Suno, and the like will have an uphill battle to prove their “fair use” defense.
Current Status: We are still awaiting the “fair use” determination by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, after the federal district court had certified Ross’ fair-use and copyrightability arguments for interlocutory appeal. On April 4th, the federal district court judge granted Ross Intelligence’ motion for interlocutory appeal off the Court’s summary judgment ruling against Ross’ “fair use” and copyrightability arguments. The Court stated that “Though I remain confident in my February 2025 summary judgment opinion, I recognize that there are substantial ground for difference of opinion on controlling legal issues in this case.” The two questions certified are “(1) whether the West headnotes and West Key Number System are original; and (2) whether Ross’s use of the headnotes was fair use.”
We’re not particularly surprised at this development. The country is watching this case rather closely because of its proximity to the generative AI training cases, and the hundreds of billions of dollars at stake there. Trying the case without considering the certified questions, and then having those issues reversed on appeal could waste everyone’s resources.
8. Reddit v. Anthropic
Background: Reddit, which has an ongoing generative AI licensing program, recently filed state court claims against Anthropic. Reddit filed its new state court action in California alleging breach of contract, unjust enrichment, trespass to chattels, tortious interference, and unfair competition. Reddit is an online forum and link-sharing site with millions of daily users and which recently held its initial public offering. Reddit offers materials posted by its users as training data available for licensing to companies like Anthropic, and its central complaint is that Anthropic has circumvented its licensing process in order to scrape training data without compensating Reddit, in violation of its User Agreement.
According to Reddit, although Anthropic has publicly stated that it does not scrape Reddit for training data, Reddit’s audit logs show that Anthropic has continued to deploy “automated bots to access Reddit content more than one hundred thousand times” in the months following these statements. Reddit alleges that this access outside its permitted licensing channels posses a risk to its users’ privacy as well as to the performance of the site itself, which must process these incoming automated requests in order to serve responses to them.
This case is distinct from other cases reported here because — unlike many other Plaintiffs — Reddit has an established channel through which Anthropic could pay for and benefit from Reddit’s data. Reddit’s position, therefore, is not one of an unwilling participant in the development process of AI, but rather that of a company which very much wishes to be a go-to source for training data and which is attempting to ensure that this benefit is only provided to paying partners in this enterprise. We will continue to report as this case develops.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. The docket here remains stagnant.
9. UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
Background: This case was brought on June 24, 2024, in the Southern District of New York, by a group of major record companies against the company behind Udio, a generative AI service launched in April 2024 by a team of former researchers from Google Deepmind. Much like Suno (above), Udio allows users to create digital music files based on text prompts or audio files. And as with the complaint against Suno, Plaintiffs rely on tests comprising targeted prompts including the characteristics of popular sound recordings — such as the decade of release, the topic, genre, and descriptions of the artist. They allege that using these prompts caused Udio's product to generate music files that strongly resembled copyrighted recordings. The claims are for direct infringement and related causes of action. The judge assigned is Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. The docket in his case has seen very little development in the past 11 weeks. However, the parties have continued to resolve discovery issues behind the scenes with the help of Special Master Judge James Francis.
10. UMG Recordings v. Suno
Background: The RIAA on behalf of the major record labels filed their lawsuit in the federal district Court in Massachusetts on June 24th, 2024, for mass copyright infringement and related claims based on alleged training on their copyrighted works. Suno is a generative AI service that allows users to create digital music files based on text prompts. This is the first case brought against an AI service related to sound recordings. In its answer on August 1st, 2024, Suno argued that its actions were protected by fair use. The judge assigned is Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor, IV.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. As we discussed ten weeks ago, the Court adopted the parties’ joint stipulation and proposed order stipulating that digital copies of the works would suffice as deposit copies. Though the parties have continued discovery in the background, this has resulted in relatively few filings.
11. Concord Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
Background: UMG, Concord Music and several other major music companies sued Amazon-backed OpenAI competitor Anthropic on October 18th, 2023 in the U.S. District Court (Middle District of Tennessee). The music companies assert that Anthropic is infringing their music lyric copyrights on a massive scale by scraping the entire web to train its AI, essentially sucking up their copyrighted lyrics into its vortex – all without any licensing, consent or payment. In its response, Anthropic claimed fair use. The case was transferred to the Northern District of California on June 26th, 2024 and closed in Tennessee. The judge assigned is Judge Eumi K. Lee. The parties have not yet had a case management conference.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. The past seven weeks have been quiet, with few docket developments. Last week the Court reset the motion on Anthropic’s motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims for contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and CMI removal. The hearing was previously set for July 30th and is now scheduled for September 3rd.
12. Sarah Andersen v. Stability AI
Background: Visual artists filed this putative class action on January 13th, 2023, alleging direct and induced copyright infringement, DMCA violations, false endorsement and trade dress claims based on the creation and functionality of Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and DreamStudio, Midjourney Inc.’s generative AI tool, and DeviantArt’s DreamUp. On August 12th, 2024, the Court dismissed many of the claims in Plaintiffs’ first amended complaint, leaving the claims for direct copyright infringement, trademark, trade dress, and inducement. The assigned judge is Judge William H. Orrick.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. A couple weeks ago, the Court determined that Plaintiffs’ proposed expert, Dr. Ben Yanbin Zhao, could not be allowed to see confidential information from Stability as a result of his prior academic work on tools for protecting artists from unauthorized use of their work as training data. Last week, however, has been quiet, with no significant filings on the docket. Check back soon to find out who Plaintiffs pick as their new expert.
13. Dow Jones & Co, et al v. Perplexity AI
Background: On October 21st, 2024 The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post sued generative search company Perplexity AI in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for copyright infringement and other related claims. A new twist in this litigation is the focus on Retrieval Augmented Generation (“RAG”) AI. RAG GenAI not only uses an LLM trained on copyrighted material to respond to individual prompts, but also goes out to the web to update itself based on the relevant query. Perplexity even said the quiet part out loud, encouraging its users to “skip the links” to the actual sources of the copyrighted content. Based on Perplexity’s RAG model, the media Plaintiffs allege that Perplexity is infringing on their copyrights at the input and output stage, sometimes reproducing copyrighted content verbatim. Plaintiffs cited their parent company News Corp’s recent licensing agreement with OpenAI in explaining that GenAI technology can be developed by legitimate means.
Current Status: Going into deep freeze. It has been sixteen weeks since Plaintiffs submitted their memorandum of law opposing Defendant’s motion to dismiss or transfer the case. We’re going to put this case on the back burner until there is some substantial movement on the docket.
14. Getty Images v. Midjourney and Stability AI
Background: Getty Images filed this lawsuit against image generator Stability AI on February 2nd, 2023, accusing the company of infringing more than 12 million photographs, their associated captions and metadata, in building and offering Stable Diffusion and DreamStudio. Getty’s claims are similar to those in The New York Times v. Microsoft & OpenAI case above, but here they are in the context of visual images instead of written articles - i.e., unlicensed scraping by their AI with an intent to compete directly with, and profit from, Getty Images (i.e., market substitution). This case also includes trademark infringement allegations arising from the accused technology’s ability to replicate Getty Images’ watermarks in the AI outputs. Getty filed its Second Amended Complaint on July 8th, 2024, and the parties are currently engaged in jurisdictional discovery related to Defendants’ motion to transfer the case to the Northern District of California. The judge assigned is Judge Jennifer L. Hall.
Current Status: Still no update for Getty. With no notable updates for Getty in over a third of a year, this case on the back-burner. As a final update on where we last left off: Getty had submitted a letter to the Court on November 25th, 2024 explaining its frustration with Stability AI’s refusal to participate in discovery or participate in a Rule 26(f) conference. In August 2024, Stability AI had argued that they were under no obligation to commence fact discovery until the Court issued its ruling on jurisdiction. Getty had requested that the Court order Stability to stop delaying and proceed with the case, but after several months with no response from the Court, it appears unclear when things will begin moving forward again.
We will continue to keep tabs on this case and provide an update if and when it resumes forward movement.
