Keeping track of, and keeping straight, three AI court cases currently in the news, listed here in chronological order of initiation:
1. New York Times / OpenAI scraping case
Case Name: New York Times Co. et al. v. Microsoft Corp. et al.
Case Number: 1:23-cv-11195-SHS-OTW
Filed: December 27, 2023
Court Type: Federal
Court: U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Presiding Judge: Sidney H. Stein
Magistrate Judge: Ona T. Wang
Main defendant in interest is OpenAI. Other plaintiffs have added their claims to those of the NYT.
Main claim type and allegation: Copyright; defendant's chatbot system alleged to have "scraped" plaintiff's copyrighted newspaper data product without permission or compensation.
On April 4, 2025, Defendants' motion to dismiss was partially granted and partially denied, trimming back some claims and preserving others, so the complaints will now be answered and discovery begins.
On May 13, 2025, Defendants were ordered to preserve all ChatGPT logs, including deleted ones.
2. AI teen suicide case
Case Name: Garcia v. Character Technologies, Inc. et al.
Case Number: 6:24-cv-1903-ACC-UAM
Filed: October 22, 2024
Court Type: Federal
Court: U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida (Orlando).
Presiding Judge: Anne C. Conway
Magistrate Judge: Not assigned
Other notable defendant is Google. Google's parent, Alphabet, has been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice (meaning it might be brought back in at another time).
Main claim type and allegation: Wrongful death; defendant's chatbot alleged to have directed or aided troubled teen in committing suicide.
On May 21, 2025 the presiding judge denied a pre-emptive "nothing to see here" motion to dismiss, so the complaint will now be answered and discovery begins.
This case presents some interesting first-impression free speech issues in relation to LLMs.
3. Reddit / Anthropic scraping case
Case Name: Reddit, Inc. v. Anthropic, PBC
Case Number: CGC-25-524892
Court Type: State
Court: California Superior Court, San Francisco County
Filed: June 4, 2025
Presiding Judge:
Main claim type and allegation: Unfair Competition; defendant's chatbot system alleged to have "scraped" plaintiff's Internet discussion-board data product without permission or compensation.
Note: The claim type is "unfair competition" rather than copyright, likely because copyright belongs to federal law and would have required bringing the case in federal court instead of state court.
Stay tuned!
Stay tuned to ASLNN - The Apprehensive_Sky Legal News NetworkSM for more developments!
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