Posts in Copyright Litigation

Taking their cue from the recent Bartz v. Anthropic saga, the authors of a neuroscience book and professors at the State University of New York filed a class action complaint on October 9 with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that Apple Inc. committed mass copyright infringement by using pirated books to train its artificial intelligence systems. Plaintiffs Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik claimed that Apple built its Apple Intelligence platform, including its OpenELM and Foundation Models, by making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works without permission or compensation.

Dr. Stephen Thaler has taken his fight to get works created by artificial intelligence (AI) machines recognized as copyrightable to the U.S. Supreme Court. In his petition for certiorari, filed October 9 by Ryan Abbott of Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan, Thaler is asking the court to take up the question: “Whether works outputted by an AI system without a direct, traditional authorial contribution by a natural person can be copyrighted.”

In 2025, three federal courts finally confronted a question that had hovered over artificial intelligence for years: can machines legally learn from copyrighted works? Each opinion—Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, Bartz v. Anthropic, and Kadrey v. Meta Platforms—applied the four-factor fair-use test under 17 U.S.C. §107 to large-scale model training. Together, they form the first real framework for evaluating how copyright interacts with machine learning.

The recent $1.5 billion settlement between a major AI company and authors over copyright infringement represents far more than legal resolution—it marks the dawn of legitimate AI training data markets. This watershed moment signals the beginning of a necessary evolution toward market-based licensing schemes, much like how the music industry adapted to digital distribution by developing fair compensation frameworks for artists.

A number of amici have weighed in this week supporting ROSS Intelligence’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit challenging the originality and fair use rulings of the District of Delaware in a copyright infringement case brought by global legal information company, Thomson Reuters. ROSS’s petition for review was granted by the Third Circuit in June.

Imagine a friend borrows your car for a week. He promises to bring it back clean and full of gas. Reasonable enough, until you discover he racked up 1,500 miles because, while he wasn’t using it, he let his cousin run Uber shifts with it and pocketed a cut of the fares. You didn’t agree to that. You agreed to one driver, one purpose. The cousin had no right to free ride on your investment, devalue your property, or make money off your car without permission. Is it theft? Not quite. But it’s a textbook example of “conversion”—getting hold of something legally to use for a specific purpose, then deploying it in a very different manner. That, in essence, is what Zillow stands accused of doing to CoStar: Co-opting photos that CoStar put into public view, without authorization, to drive its own profits. The alleged free ride could cost Zillow nearly $7 billion.

The author plaintiffs in the high-profile case against AI company, Anthropic, filed a “Supplemental Brief in Support of Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Settlement” on Monday with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The filing addressed outstanding issues following the Court’s initial preliminary approval hearing on September 8, including the plan of distribution.

Disney Enterprises and 11 other plaintiffs filed a complaint last week against Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) image and video generator MiniMax in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The complaint alleged direct and secondary copyright infringement by operating a commercial AI service that “pirates and plunders Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works on a massive scale. MiniMax markets Hailuo AI as a ‘Hollywood studio in your pocket.’”

Following a split decision on September 10 that temporarily restored Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter to her role, the Trump Administration has filed a petition for rehearing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit calling the court’s ruling an “extraordinary step”. The September 10 decision said that “the district court abused its discretion by failing to consider ‘unusual actions relating to the discharge itself’ and a ‘genuinely extraordinary situation’— factors that inform the irreparable-harm analysis and distinguish this case from other removal cases.”

Late last week, 18 amicus briefs were filed in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, the majority supporting the petitioners, Cox. The American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) was the only amicus to recommend affirmance of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s 2024 ruling in favor of Sony.

Warner Bros. Entertainment and four other plaintiffs filed their official complaint late last week against artificial intelligence (AI) image generator Midjourney, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The complaint alleged two causes of copyright infringement of characters through its direct and secondary infringement by operating as a commercial subscription service through AI that “brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property as if it were its own.”

Following a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on August 27 requesting its appeal be held in abeyance, AI company Anthropic has agreed to pay what the plaintiffs are calling “the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, larger than any other copyright class action settlement or any individual copyright case litigated to final judgment.” According to the “Unopposed Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Settlement” filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, Anthropic will pay the plaintiffs, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, and MJ & KJ, Inc. and the Class “at least $1.5 billion dollars, plus interest,” amounting to about $3,000 per 500,000 works in the Class.

Cox Communications, Inc. filed its opening brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on August 29, arguing that the justices should reverse a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decision holding the internet service provider (ISP) liable for contributory copyright infringement based on the actions of its users. According to the brief, the case presents fundamental questions regarding whether an ISP is “materially contributing” to infringement by providing internet infrastructure and what constitutes “willful” conduct under the Copyright Act.

In a Motion for Summary Judgment filed earlier this weekwith the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, AI artist Jason M. Allen requested that the court overturn the Copyright Office’s refusal to register his award-winning image “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” created with the AI system Midjourney. The U.S. Copyright Office Review Board previously denied registration for Allen’s artwork. The Review Board asserted that when AI produces complex works solely from a human prompt, the “traditional elements of authorship” are executed through the technology and not by the human user.

According to a Consent Motion filed Tuesday, August 26, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Anthropic has requested that its petition appealing a district court ruling on class certification and its Emergency Motion to stay district court proceedings pending disposition of that petition both be held in abeyance. The request is based on the execution by both Anthropic and plaintiffs, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, of “a binding term sheet intended to memorialize the terms of a proposed class settlement.”