AI Litigation: The Current State of AI-Related Copyright Lawsuits

Ropes & Gray recently issued a memo on the current state of AI-related copyright litigation.  The article notes that more than 15 notable copyright infringement suits are pending across the country against AI platforms. These suits are premised on various theories of liability, including allegations that AI models infringe copyrights through training with copyrighted works, because the output of those models infringes copyrights, or both.

The memo addresses some of the details underlying the theories of liability put forward by plaintiffs. This excerpt notes that a novel copyright infringement theory asserted in recent litigation has received a skeptical response from the court:

Most plaintiffs in the cases cited have asserted direct infringement claims alleging that each respective AI company in the case accessed copyrighted material and made copies for the purposes of training a given AI model. Other plaintiffs, such as GitHub, Getty Images and Raw Story, have recently relied on a more novel theory of improper copyright information management under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”).  Specifically, such plaintiffs have alleged that the defendants removed copyright management information (including the copyright notice, title, identifying information, terms of use, and identifying symbols or numbers) from the copyrighted works, or caused their AI products to omit this information from outputs.

In November 2024, however, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that such information management theories do not give rise to Article III standing, which requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation in order for a party to bring suit, and dismissed a case relying on such a theory without prejudice. The court ruled that “[the judge is] skeptical about Plaintiffs’ ability to allege a cognizable injury but prepared to consider an amended pleading.” Nonetheless, some plaintiffs allege injury separate from improper information management, namely, direct copyright infringement. However, these cases have not yet been resolved.

The memo also discusses the defenses asserted by defendants in response to AI-related copyright infringement claims, the status of the Copyright Office’s ongoing investigation into copyright law and policy issues raised by AI, and the need for users to pay close attention to the risk allocation provisions contained in AI-related vendor contracts.