The Seattle Times Company v. OpenAI Inc.
Summary
The Seattle Times Company and Newsday LLC are suing OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the companies used their copyrighted news articles without permission to train AI models. The publishers claim OpenAI scraped their journalism—a valuable proprietary asset—to build ChatGPT and related products worth billions, without compensation or consent.
Summary generated by AI from public docket data. Verify against the original filing before relying on it.
Coverage vs reality meter
Prior 2P · 1D · 4N (65 articles)→Recent 30d 4P · 0D · 1N (7 articles)
Press coverage leans plaintiff-favorable; no court ruling has been classified yet.
Coverage breakdown — the articles behind the meter
54 plaintiff-favorable · 1 defendant-favorable · 17 neutral articles
The meter counts distinct coverage events, not articles: 6 plaintiff · 1 defendant · 5 neutral events — a burst of same-stance coverage counts once, however many outlets ran it.
- Correction: OpenAI-States' Lawsuit storyYahoo! Finance Canada · 2026-10-16
- USA Today becomes the latest publisher to sue OpenAIThe Verge · 2026-10-08
- FTC investigates OpenAI and Anthropic over potential consumer harmsThe Seattle Times · 2026-09-30
- OpenAI Ignored Employees Who Warned It Wasn’t Doing Enough About SecurityThe Seattle Times · 2026-09-29
- News organizations sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.GIGAZINE · 2026-09-07
Coverage sentiment vs. docket activity over time
Counsel of record
- PRO SENewsday LLC, The Seattle Times Company
- Court
- U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
- Docket no.
- 1:26-cv-07644
- Nature of suit
- Copyright
- Judge
- Jed S. Rakoff
- Filed
- 2026-09-04
- Last filing
- 2026-09-08
Cause
17:101 Copyright Infringement
Entities in this case
Parties
Newsday LLC (plaintiff) The Seattle Times Company (plaintiff) Microsoft Corporation (defendant) OpenAI Foundation (defendant) OpenAI Group PBC (defendant) OpenAI Holdings, LLC (defendant) OAI Corporation (defendant) OpenAI Global LLC (defendant) OpenAI OpCo, LLC (defendant) OpenAI LLC (defendant) OpenAI GP, LLC (defendant) OpenAI Inc. (defendant)