U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein's brief order Monday denied OpenAI's bid to strike what it calls a new "download claim" for copyright infringement in the consolidated class complaint. The judge rejected the company's argument that because the operative complaint doesn't specifically link the downloads of the plaintiffs' books to OpenAI's training of its large language models like the previous class complaints did, it is an impermissible new claim.
The case is a consolidation of 10 lawsuits filed in various jurisdictions alleging OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft used copyrighted content to train the models that power ChatGPT.
"The prior class complaints asserted a cause of action for copyright infringement and alleged that OpenAI impermissibly downloaded and reproduced plaintiffs' books," the order states. "The fact that many of the allegations in the prior class complaints suggested that the ultimate purpose of the reproduction was to train OpenAI's LLMs is not dispositive."
"A complaint need only provide defendants with fair notice of the claims alleged against them to comply with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8," it states. "The prior complaints' factual allegations adequately put OpenAI on notice of plaintiffs' claims against it for copyright infringement based on its alleged download and reproduction of plaintiffs' books."
That means the consolidated complaint's infringement claim based on OpenAI's alleged download and reproduction of the authors' books is not a new claim in violation of the court's order from May, Judge Stein said.
Turning to separate issues raised by Microsoft, Judge Stein on Monday dismissed the tech giant's request that the authors be required to clarify that the litigation only implicates OpenAI-trained models and not models trained by Microsoft, saying there is no dispute the suit doesn't include Microsoft-training LLMs.
The judge also dismissed Microsoft's request that the authors be required to clarify the suit is limited to books and not other copyrightable works, saying it's not necessary because the complaint is clear that it is limited to books, according to the order.
The order came the same day that Judge Stein denied OpenAI's bid to dismiss the authors' claim of direct copyright infringement, saying the complaint "squarely alleges" actual copying of the writers' works and substantially similar artificial intelligence outputs.
The judge determined that "a reasonable jury could find that the allegedly infringing outputs are substantially similar to plaintiffs' works," finding that although the ChatGPT-generated summaries don't include every little plot twist and character development in the original works, "they are most certainly attempts at abridgment or condensation of some of the central copyrightable elements of the original works such as setting, plot and characters."
In his order, Judge Stein included an example of the output's detailed summarization of George R.R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones" novel: "Across the Narrow Sea on the continent of Essos, the last surviving Targaryens, Viserys and Daenerys, are in exile after being overthrown by King Robert ... Viserys marries off Daenerys to Khal Drogo, a powerful Dothraki warlord."
"A more discerning observer could easily conclude that this detailed summary is substantially similar to Martin's original work, including because the summary conveys the overall tone and feel of the original work by parroting the plot, characters, and themes of the original," the order states.
However, Judge Stein was quick to emphasize that "nothing in this opinion is intended to suggest a view on whether the allegedly infringing outputs are protected as fair uses of the original works."
Counsel for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday evening.
The authors and news outlets are represented by Anna Freymann, Wesley Dozier, Danna Elmasry, Kenneth Byrd, Rachel Geman and Reilly Stoler of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, CeCe Cole and Scott Sholder of Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP, David Boies, Maxwell Pritt, Joshua Stein and Annabel Weinbach of Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP and Justin Nelson, Amber Magee, Charlotte Lepic, Jordan Connors and Rohit Nath of Susman Godfrey LLP.
OpenAI is represented by Andrew F. Dawson, Robert A. Van Nest, R. James Slaughter, Paven Malhotra, Michelle S. Ybarra, Nicholas S. Goldberg, Thomas E. Gorman, Katie Lynn Joyce, Sarah Salomon, Christopher S. Sun, Andrew S. Bruns and Edward A. Bayley of Keker Van Nest & Peters LLP, Andrew M. Gass, Joseph R. Wetzel, Sarang V. Damle, Elana Nightingale Dawson, Michael David, Allison L. Stillman, Rachel R. Blitzer, Herman Yue and Luke A. Budiardjo of Latham & Watkins LLP and Joseph C. Gratz, Rose S. Lee, Andrew L. Perito, Carolyn Homer, Jocelyn Edith Greer, Eric K. Nikolaides and Emily C. Wood of Morrison Foerster LLP.
Microsoft is represented by Annette Hurst, Christopher Cariello, Marc Shapiro, Sheryl Garko and Laura Najemy of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and Jeffrey Jacobson, Jared Briant, Kirstin Stoll-DeBell, Carrie Beyer and Elizabeth Scheibel of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP.
The case is In re: OpenAI Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, case number 1:25-md-03143, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
--Additional reporting by Elliot Weld. Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.
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