Publishers Back Copyright Claims Against OpenAI

The brief asks a New York court to apply existing copyright principles to generative AI training, a question with no ruling yet.

Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

Bold flat-color editorial illustration of sealed archive boxes beside uniform bound volumes against a pale wall, evoking the legal record in a copyright dispute. — Publishers including STM, AAP, IBPA and CCC filed an amicus brief in a New York federal court backing authors suing OpenAI over training its AI models on copyrighted works. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) has joined an amicus brief supporting authors, publishers and news publishers suing OpenAI over alleged unauthorized use of copyrighted works to train its AI models. The brief was filed jointly with AAP, IBPA and CCC in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The development is part of pending litigation and has not been resolved.

Why it matters

The brief argues that established copyright principles apply when copyrighted materials are used to train generative AI models, a question the court has not yet settled. The filing also points to a growing market for licensing copyrighted content for AI applications, which could shape how fair use is applied to AI training.

The filing is a legal brief rather than a technical benchmark, so no performance figures or specifications were reported. It describes the claims as allegations that copyrighted works were used without authorization to train OpenAI's models.

The players

International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM)

A global association of scholarly and scientific publishers that filed the amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs.

OpenAI

An AI developer whose generative AI models are at the center of the consolidated copyright lawsuits.

Microsoft

A technology company named in proceedings concerning its involvement with OpenAI.

The details

Amicus briefs are filings by parties not directly involved in a case that offer the court additional arguments. Here, STM, AAP, IBPA and CCC backed the plaintiffs, arguing that the fair use doctrine should adapt to new technology without weakening copyright owners' rights. The lawsuits claim copyrighted works were used as training data for OpenAI's generative AI models, a process in which a model learns patterns from large collections of text.

Nov. 2, 2026: STM's joining of the amicus brief was reported.

The Tech Race

The filing places the case within an ongoing legal contest over whether training generative AI on copyrighted material falls under fair use. Its focus on a growing licensing market suggests publishers are positioning licensed content as a commercial input for AI developers.

The ruling's outcome is not yet known, and no timeline for a decision was reported. Users of AI tools would not see immediate changes from this brief, and any effect on product availability or pricing has not been announced.

The takeaway

Watch for the court's first opinion from a New York court on copyright issues arising from AI training, which the source says is expected. That ruling will indicate whether the fair use arguments advanced in this brief gain traction.