A federal judge rejected a majority of motions by OpenAI and Microsoft to dismiss parts of a lawsuit accusing the tech companies of swiping stories from the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and other newspapers to train their AI products.
The Tribune, its affiliated newspapers in Media News Group and Tribune Publishing, the Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting have accused OpenAI and Microsoft of stealing millions of copyrighted news stories to benefit popular AI products like ChatGPT.
Manhattan Federal Judge Sidney Stein’s ruling Wednesday preserves the core elements of the lawsuit, which will now go forward to trial. While Stein rejected efforts to dismiss claims related to statute of limitations, trademark dilution and stripping content management information from the content in question, he dismissed CMI claims against Microsoft along with a secondary CMI claim against OpenAI, and one other unfair competition claim against both defendants. The judge dismissed additional claims for the Center for Investigative Reporting and the New York Times.
“We get to go forward with virtually all of our claims intact, including all of the copyright filings,” Steven Lieberman, a lawyer representing the news publishers, said. “It’s a significant victory, albeit a preliminary stage of the case.”
A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment.
In a statement, a spokesperson for OpenAI said “hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on ChatGPT to improve their daily lives, inspire creativity, and to solve hard problems. We welcome the court’s dismissal of many of these claims and look forward to making it clear that we build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner grounded in fair use, and supportive of innovation.”
Microsoft and OpenAI don’t deny they depend on copyrighted material, instead arguing that it’s under their rights to do so under the fair use doctrine. Under that doctrine, the use of copyrighted materials are permitted under certain circumstances, including using the materials for educational purposes.
The Tribune and affiliated newspapers filed the suit in 2024, challenging that notion, alleging the companies “simply take the work product of reporters, journalists, editorial writers, editors and others who contribute to the work of local newspapers — all without any regard for the efforts, much less the legal rights, of those who create and publish the news on which local communities rely.”
“This decision is a significant victory for us,” said Frank Pine, executive editor at MediaNews Group. “The court denied the majority of the dismissal motions filed by OpenAI and Microsoft. The claims the court has dismissed do not undermine the main thrust of our case, which is that these companies have stolen our work and violated our copyright in a way that fundamentally damages our business.”
The Tribune brought its suit alongside its sister newspapers, MediaNews Group’s The Mercury News, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register and the St. Paul Pioneer Press; and Tribune Publishing’s New York Daily News, Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Pine also addressed recent efforts by big tech to lobby the Trump Administration to weaken copyright protections.
“OpenAI lobbying the government to loosen copyright laws to make their thievery legal is shameful and un-American. They have a $150 billion valuation for a product they acknowledge could not have been built without the copyrighted content they stole from journalists, authors, poets, scholars and all manner of creatives and academics. Makers pay for their raw materials, and good businesses bolster their communities by creating economies and industries, not by destroying them.”
Microsoft and OpenAI are accused in the litigation of harming the newspapers’ subscription-based business model by misappropriating journalists’ work and providing it for free. The cases allege that the AI models also risk tarnishing reporters’ reputations by sometimes misstating their reporting or attributing it to others.
The papers are seeking unspecified damages, restitution of profits and a court order forcing the companies to stop using their materials to train chatbots.
“We look forward to presenting a jury with all the facts regarding OpenAI and Microsoft copying and improper use of the content of newspapers across the country,” Lieberman said.
