News Corp Countersues Brave Software Over AI Content Scraping

News Corp filed a countersuit against Brave Software in an Oakland, California, federal court, accusing the search engine of flagrant theft. The media conglomerate alleges that Brave used masked web crawlers to covertly harvest articles from the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, subsequently reselling verbatim or near-verbatim snippets and summaries to enterprise AI customers.

News Corp seeks an injunction and unspecified monetary damages, including up to $150,000 per infringement. The legal battle follows a cease-and-desist letter from News Corp and a preemptive lawsuit filed by Brave in March 2025, in which the software company sought a court declaration that its indexing and summarization practices constitute fair use. Brave has characterized the opposition as a threat to generative AI innovation.

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson condemned the practices as tacky tech trafficking, describing Brave as content crooks and brand brigands who illicitly fenced journalists' work. The dispute comes after failed commercial negotiations between the two parties, though News Corp continues to maintain licensing partnerships with other AI firms such as Meta and OpenAI.