OpenAI Seeks to Centralize Copyright Lawsuits Against It (2)

OpenAI Inc. will petition to centralize eight copyright infringement and Digital Millennium Copyright Act lawsuits against it in New York and California into a multidistrict litigation, the company told a federal judge Thursday.

The artificial intelligence company informed Magistrate Judge Wang of its decision at status conference this week in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, according to a letter filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. OpenAI has drawn lawsuits accusing it of violating copyright law in the process of training its large language models, including suits brought by New York Times Co. and authors including comedian Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

OpenAI doesn’t intend to ask for a stay of the cases while its request is pending with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and will continue to participate in scheduled discovery, according to the letter.

Late last month, Intercept Media Inc.'s claim that OpenAI intentionally removed copyright management information from the news outlet’s work in violation of the DMCA survived a motion to dismiss in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Earlier in November, OpenAI defeated a similar suit from Raw Story Media Inc. and Alternet Media Inc. in the same court.

The company previously moved to merge lawsuits filed by The New York Times and Daily News LP. The New York Times and OpenAI declined to comment.

Morrison & Foerster LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, and Keker Van Nest & Peters LLP represent OpenAI. Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP and Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel LLP represent the authors.

The case is Tremblay v. OpenAI Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 23-cv-03223, letter filed 12/5/24.