Nearly 400 Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Copyright

A coalition of nearly 400 local and regional news publishers filed a federal lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft Corporation in the Southern District of New York in late June 2026. The plaintiffs, led by Richner Communications and including WEHCO Newspapers Inc. and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, allege the companies systematically scraped hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles, including content behind paywalls, to train ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.

The complaint asserts that the defendants violated the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by stripping author bylines and copyright notices from the original works. The publishers argue this unauthorized appropriation diminishes subscription revenue and threatens the viability of local journalism. In a separate amended complaint filed on June 26, outlets including The New York Times and the Boston Herald alleged that Microsoft intentionally induced infringement by encouraging users to republish plagiarized journalistic work.

Represented by Platkin LLP, the coalition is seeking statutory damages, the disgorgement of profits, and a permanent injunction. The lawsuit cites testimony from OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who previously acknowledged that training leading AI models without copyrighted materials would be impossible. Microsoft and OpenAI have denied any wrongdoing.