SDNY Judge Denies OpenAI's Motion in Book-Download Copyright Case

A federal judge in the Southern District of New York has rejected OpenAI's motion to strike claims alleging the company unlawfully downloaded and reproduced copyrighted books for training its AI models. Judge Sidney H. Stein issued the ruling on Monday, finding that prior complaints had sufficiently notified OpenAI of infringement allegations related to book downloads, even if the ultimate purpose was AI training.

The case is part of a massive multidistrict litigation (MDL) consolidating numerous copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft, with authors including David Baldacci and Michael Chabon seeking substantial damages for unauthorized use of their works. Judge Stein granted partial relief by striking allegations concerning future models like GPT-4V, GPT-4.5, and GPT-5, limiting the scope to specific models from GPT-3 to GPT-4o Mini.

Legal experts, such as Navodaya Singh Rajpurohit of Coinque Consulting, emphasized that authors may need to provide concrete evidence, and courts have ordered OpenAI to preserve output logs and metadata to trace whether specific books were ingested. The ruling highlights ongoing industry-wide copyright battles, including a separate case led by The New York Times, but has not triggered any notable shifts in cryptocurrency markets.