Key holding or allegation
An April 2025 ruling allowed important contributory-infringement theories to proceed and treated different CMI theories separately; later government and summary-judgment filings are advocacy, not merits holdings.
Why it matters
Flagship U.S. publisher litigation testing LLM training, output substitution, CMI and fair use on a developed record.
Facts
News publishers allege unauthorised use of articles in training and reproduction or substitution through generative outputs.
Issues before the court
The April 2025 pleading ruling allowed important contributory-infringement theories to proceed. The United States filed a nonbinding fair-use statement on 1 Sep 2026, and the parties filed summary-judgment motions on 4 Sep 2026.
What the court did not decide
Ultimate training fair use, output infringement, sanctions, damages and final liability remain unresolved.
Procedural timeline
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
Motion-to-dismiss ruling: Important contributory-infringement theories survived while DMCA section 1202 claims were treated differently by defendant and theory.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
Summary-judgment motions filed: The New York Times and defendants filed summary-judgment briefing within the coordinated OpenAI litigation, moving the training/fair-use dispute to a developed-record merits stage.