AI Will Continue to Dominate California IP Litigation in 2026; Bloomberg Law, December 26, 2025

 

Annelise Levy

, Bloomberg Law; AI Will Continue to Dominate California IP Litigation in 2026

"Lawsuits against AI giants OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity are set to continue headlining intellectual property developments in California federal courts in 2026.

In the coming months, we’ll see decisions in two key cases: whether Anthropic PBC’s historic $1.5 billion copyright settlement with authors will receive final approval and if music publishers’ separate copyright lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company will head to trial in September.

Here’s a closer look at the California legal battles that could redefine the landscape of IP law next year."

OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI Hit With Copyright Suit from Writers; Bloomberg Law, December 22, 2025

 Annelise Levy, Bloomberg Law; OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI Hit With Copyright Suit from Writers

"Writers including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Carreyrou filed a copyright lawsuit accusing six AI giants of using pirated copies of their books to train large language models.

The complaint, filed Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Anthropic PBC, Google LLC, OpenAI Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., xAI Corp., and Perplexity AI Inc. committed a “deliberate act of theft.”

It is the first copyright lawsuit against xAI over its training process, and the first suit brought by authors against Perplexity...

Carreyrou is among the authors who opted out of a $1.5 billion class-action settlement with Anthropic."

Launch, Train, Settle: How Suno And Udio’s Licensing Deals Made Copyright Infringement Profitable; Forbes, December 18, 2025

Virginie Berger, Forbes; Launch, Train, Settle: How Suno And Udio’s Licensing Deals Made Copyright Infringement Profitable

"The Precedent That Pays

Perhaps most concerning is what these partial settlements teach other AI companies: copyright infringement can be a viable business strategy, as long as you only have to answer to those with the resources to sue.

The calculus is straightforward. Build your product using copyrighted material without permission. Grow quickly while competitors who might try to license properly struggle with costs and complexity.

If you get big enough, those with sufficient resources will eventually sue. At that point, negotiate from strength because your technology is already deployed, your users are already dependent on it, and dismantling what you've built would be costly.

The worst case isn't court-ordered damages or shutdown anymore but will be a licensing deal where you finally pay something. But far less than you would have paid to license properly from the start, and only to the major players who could force you to the table. And you keep operating with legitimacy.

Both Suno and Udio can now market themselves as "responsibly licensed" platforms, pointing to their deals with major labels as proof of legitimacy. The narrative shifts from "they stole content to build this" to "they're innovative partners in the future of music.""

Australian culture, resources and democracy for $4,300 a year? Thanks for the offer, tech bros, but no thanks; The Guardian, December 15, 2025

Peter Lewis , The Guardian; Australian culture, resources and democracy for $4,300 a year? Thanks for the offer, tech bros, but no thanks

"According to the Tech Council, AI will deliver $115bn in annual productivity (or about $4,300 per person), rubbery figures generated by industry-commissioned research based on estimates on hours saved with no regard for jobs lost, the distribution of the promised dividend benefit or how the profits will flow.

In return for this ill-defined bounty, Farquhar says our government will need to allow the tech industry to do three things: build a data and text mining exemption to copyright law, rapidly scale data centre infrastructure and allow foreign companies to use these centres without regard for local laws. This is a proposition that demands closer scrutiny.

The use of copyrighted content to train AI has been a burning issue since 2023 when a massive data dredge saw more than 190,000 authors (including me) have our works plundered without our consent to train AI. Musicians and artists too have had their work scraped and repurposed.

This theft has been critical in training the large language models to portray something approaching empathy. It has also allowed paid users to take this stolen content and ape creators, devaluing and diminishing their work in the process. Nick Cave has described this as “replication as travesty”, noting “songs arise out of suffering … data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing.”

The sense of grievance among creators over the erasure of culture is wide and deep. A wave of creators from Peter Garrett to Tina Arena, Anna Funderand Trent Dalton have determined this is the moment to take a stand.

It is not just the performers; journalists, academics, voiceover and visual artists are all being replaced by shittier but cheaper automated products built on the theft of their labour, undermining the integrity of their work and will ultimately take their jobs.

Like fossil fuels, what is being extracted and consumed is the sum of our accumulated history. It goes from metaphor to literal when it comes to the second plank of Farquhar’s pitch: massive spending on industrial infrastructure to accommodate AI.

This imperative to power AI is the justification used by Donald Trump to recharge the mining of fossil fuels, while the industry is beating the “modular nuclear” drum for a cleaner AI revolution. Meanwhile, the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, is reassuring us that we don’t need to stress because AI will solve climate change anyway!

The third and final element of Farquhar’s pitch is probably its most revealing. If Australia wants to build this AI nirvana, foreign nations should be given diplomatic immunity for the data centres built and operated here. This quaint notion of the “data embassy” overriding national sovereignty reinforces a growing sense that the tech sector is moving beyond the idea of the nation state governing corporations to that of a modern imperial power.

That’s the premise of Karen Hao’s book The Empire of AI, which chronicles the rise of OpenAI and the choices it made to trade off safety and the public good in pursuit of scale and profit."

Proposal to allow use of Australian copyrighted material to train AI abandoned after backlash; The Guardian, December 19, 2025

Patrick Commins , The Guardian; Proposal to allow use of Australian copyrighted material to train AI abandoned after backlash

"The Productivity Commission has abandoned a proposal to allow tech companies to mine copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence models, after a fierce backlash from the creative industries.

Instead, the government’s top economic advisory body recommended the government wait three years before deciding whether to establish an independent review of Australian copyright settings and the impact of the disruptive new technology...

In its interim report on the digital economy, the commission floated the idea of granting a “fair dealing” exemption to copyright rules that would allow AI companies to mine data and text to develop their large language models...

The furious response from creative industries to the commission’s idea included music industry bodies saying it would “legitimise digital piracy under guise of productivity”."

The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year; Time, December 11, 2025

Charlie Campbell.  Andrew R. Chow and Billy Perrigo , Time; The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year

"For decades, humankind steeled itself for the rise of thinking machines. As we marveled at their ability to beat chess champions and predict protein structures, we also recoiled from their inherent uncanniness, not to mention the threats to our sense of humanity. Leaders striving to develop the technology, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, warned that the pursuit of its powers could create unforeseen catastrophe.

This year, the debate about how to wield AI responsibly gave way to a sprint to deploy it as fast as possible. “Every industry needs it, every company uses it, and every nation needs to build it,” Huang tells TIME in a 75-minute interview in November, two days after announcing that Nvidia, the world’s first $5 trillion company, had once again smashed Wall Street’s earnings expectations. “This is the single most impactful technology of our time.” OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which at launch was the fastest-growing consumer app of all time, has surpassed 800 million weekly users. AI wrote millions of lines of code, aided lab scientists, generated viral songs, and spurred companies to re-examine their strategies or risk obsolescence. (OpenAI and TIME have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access TIME’s archives.)...

This is the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It is the story of how Huang and other tech titans grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods. Racing both beside and against each other, they placed multibillion-dollar bets on one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time. They reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons."

Government's AI consultation finds just 3% support copyright exception; The Bookseller, December 15, 2025

MAIA SNOW, The Bookseller ; Government's AI consultation finds just 3% support copyright exception

"The initial results of the consultation found that the majority of respondents (88%) backed licences being required in all cases where data was being used for AI training. Just 3% of respondents supported the government’s preferred options, which would allow data mining by AI companies and require rights holders to opt-out."

The Disney-OpenAI tie-up has huge implications for intellectual property; Fast Company, December 11, 2025

CHRIS STOKEL-WALKER, Fast Company ; The Disney-OpenAI tie-up has huge implications for intellectual property

"Walt Disney and OpenAI make for very odd bedfellows: The former is one of the most-recognized brands among children under the age of 18. The near-$200 billion company’s value has been derived from more than a century of aggressive safeguarding of its intellectual property and keeping the magic alive among innocent children.

OpenAI, which celebrated its first decade of existence this week, is best known for upending creativity, the economy, and society with its flagship product, ChatGPT. And in the last two months, it has said it wants to get to a place where its adult users can use its tech to create erotica.

So what the hell should we make of a just-announced deal between the two that will allow ChatGPT and Sora users to create images and videos of more than 200 characters, from Mickey and Minnie Mouse to the Mandalorian, starting from early 2026?"

Authors Ask to Update Meta AI Copyright Suit With Torrent Claim; Bloomberg Law, December 12, 2025

Kyle Jahner

, Bloomberg Law; Authors Ask to Update Meta AI Copyright Suit With Torrent Claim

"Authors in a putative class action copyright suit against Meta Platforms Inc. asked a federal judge for permission to amend their complaint to add a claim over Meta’s use of peer-to-peer file-sharing unveiled in discovery."

The Disney-OpenAI Deal Redefines the AI Copyright War; Wired, December 11, 2025

BRIAN BARRETT, Wired; The Disney-OpenAI Deal Redefines the AI Copyright War

 "“I think that AI companies and copyright holders are beginning to understand and become reconciled to the fact that neither side is going to score an absolute victory,” says Matthew Sag, a professor of law and artificial intelligence at Emory University. While many of these cases are still working their way through the courts, so far it seems like model inputs—the training data that these models learn from—are covered by fair use. But this deal is about outputs—what the model returns based on your prompt—where IP owners like Disney have a much stronger case

Coming to an output agreement resolves a host of messy, potentially unsolvable issues. Even if a company tells an AI model not to produce, say, Elsa at a Wendy’s drive-through, the model might know enough about Elsa to do so anyway—or a user might be able to prompt their way into making Elsa without asking for the character by name. It’s a tension that legal scholars call the “Snoopy problem,” but in this case you might as well call it the Disney problem.

“Faced with this increasingly clear reality, it makes sense for consumer-facing AI companies and entertainment giants like Disney to think about licensing arrangements,” says Sag."

Trump Says Chips Ahoy to Xi Jinping; Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2025

The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal; Trump Says Chips Ahoy to Xi Jinping

"President Trump said this week he will let Nvidia sell its H200 chip to China in return for the U.S. Treasury getting a 25% cut of the sales. The Indians struck a better deal when they sold Manhattan to the Dutch. Why would the President give away one of America’s chief technological advantages to an adversary and its chief economic competitor?"

Trump Signs Executive Order to Neuter State A.I. Laws; The New York Times, December 11, 2025

 Cecilia Kang, The New York Times; Trump Signs Executive Order to Neuter State A.I. Laws

"President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that aims to neuter state laws that place limits on the artificial intelligence industry, a win for tech companies that have lobbied against regulation of the booming technology.

Mr. Trump, who has said it is important for America to dominate A.I., has criticized the state laws for generating a confusing patchwork of regulations. He said his order would create one federal regulatory framework that would override the state laws, and added that it was critical to keep the United States ahead of China in a battle for leadership on the technology."

Banning AI Regulation Would Be a Disaster; The Atlantic, December 11, 2025

 Chuck Hagel, The Atlantic; Banning AI Regulation Would Be a Disaster

"On Monday, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would soon sign an executive order prohibiting states from regulating AI...

The greatest challenges facing the United States do not come from overregulation but from deploying ever more powerful AI systems without minimum requirements for safety and transparency...

Contrary to the narrative promoted by a small number of dominant firms, regulation does not have to slow innovation. Clear rules would foster growth by hardening systems against attack, reducing misuse, and ensuring that the models integrated into defense systems and public-facing platforms are robust and secure before deployment at scale.

Critics of oversight are correct that a patchwork of poorly designed laws can impede that mission. But they miss two essential points. First, competitive AI policy cannot be cordoned off from the broader systems that shape U.S. stability and resilience...

Second, states remain the country’s most effective laboratories for developing and refining policy on complex, fast-moving technologies, especially in the persistent vacuum of federal action...

The solution to AI’s risks is not to dismantle oversight but to design the right oversight. American leadership in artificial intelligence will not be secured by weakening the few guardrails that exist. It will be secured the same way we have protected every crucial technology touching the safety, stability, and credibility of the nation: with serious rules built to withstand real adversaries operating in the real world. The United States should not be lobbied out of protecting its own future."

Disney says Google AI infringes copyright “on a massive scale”; Ars Technica, December 11, 2025

RYAN WHITWAM , Ars Technica; Disney says Google AI infringes copyright “on a massive scale”

"Disney has sent a cease and desist to Google, alleging the company’s AI tools are infringing Disney’s copyrights “on a massive scale.”

According to the letter, Google is violating the entertainment conglomerate’s intellectual property in multiple ways. The legal notice says Google has copied a “large corpus” of Disney’s works to train its gen AI models, which is believable, as Google’s image and video models will happily produce popular Disney characters—they couldn’t do that without feeding the models lots of Disney data.

The C&D also takes issue with Google for distributing “copies of its protected works” to consumers."

EU investigates Google over AI-generated summaries in search results; BBC, December 8, 2025

 Liv McMahon , BBC; EU investigates Google over AI-generated summaries in search results

"The Commission's investigation comes down to whether Google has used the work of other people published online to build its own AI tools which it can profit from."

AI firms began to feel the legal wrath of copyright holders in 2025; NewScientist, December 10, 2025

Chris Stokel-Walker , NewScientist; AI firms began to feel the legal wrath of copyright holders in 2025

"The three years since the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot, have seen huge changes in every part of our lives. But one area that hasn’t changed – or at least, is still trying to maintain pre-AI norms – is the upholding of copyright law.

It is no secret that leading AI firms built their models by hoovering up data, including copyrighted material, from the internet without asking for permission first. This year, major copyright holders struck back, buffeting AI companies were with a range of lawsuits alleging copyright infringement."

The New York Times sues Perplexity for producing ‘verbatim’ copies of its work; The Verge, December 5, 2025

Emma Roth, The Verge; The New York Times sues Perplexity for producing ‘verbatim’ copies of its work

"The New York Times has escalated its legal battle against the AI startup Perplexity, as it’s now suing the AI “answer engine” for allegedly producing and profiting from responses that are “verbatim or substantially similar copies” of the publication’s work.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court on Friday, claims Perplexity “unlawfully crawls, scrapes, copies, and distributes” content from the NYT. It comes after the outlet’s repeated demands for Perplexity to stop using content from its website, as the NYT sent cease-and-desist notices to the AI startup last year and most recently in July, according to the lawsuit. The Chicago Tribune also filed a copyright lawsuit against Perplexity on Thursday."

The New York Times is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement; TechCrunch, December 5, 2025

Rebecca Bellan , TechCrunch; The New York Times is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement

"The New York Times filed suit Friday against AI search startup Perplexity for copyright infringement, its second lawsuit against an AI company. The Times joins several media outlets suing Perplexity, including the Chicago Tribune, which also filed suit this week."

OpenAI loses fight to keep ChatGPT logs secret in copyright case; Reuters, December 3, 2025

  Blake Brittain, Reuters ; OpenAI loses fight to keep ChatGPT logs secret in copyright case

"OpenAI must produce millions of anonymized chat logs from ChatGPT users in its high-stakes copyright dispute with the New York Times and other news outlets, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang in a decision made public on Wednesday said that the 20 million logs were relevant to the outlets' claims and that handing them over would not risk violating users' privacy."

Lawsuit or License?; Columbia Journalism Review, December 4, 2025

KLAUDIA JAŹWIŃSKA, Columbia Journalism Review; Lawsuit or License?

"Today, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism is releasing a tracker that monitors developments between news publishers and AI companies—including lawsuits, deals, and grants—based on publicly available information."