Even More Authors, Publishers Sue Meta Over Copyright in AI Training: What's Different Now; CNET, May 5, 2026

Katelyn Chedraoui , CNET; Even More Authors, Publishers Sue Meta Over Copyright in AI Training: What's Different Now

Meta won a previous AI lawsuit brought by authors. Publishers are taking a different route this time.

"New lawsuit, same questions

Copyright is one of the most contentious legal issues around AI. Tech companies like Meta need high-quality, human-created data to build and refine their AI models. Nearly all of this material is protected by copyright. That means tech companies have to enter into licensing agreements or defend their use of the content as fair use under a provision of copyright law.

Meta and Anthropic have both won previous cases in lawsuits brought by authors, successfully defending their fair use. Anthropic agreed to settle some piracy claims with authors for $1.5 billion, or about $3,000 per pirated work. Both judges warned in their decisions that this won't be the result in every lawsuit...

One of the biggest considerations in these cases is whether tech companies' use of copyrighted books will make it harder for human authors to sell their work or otherwise affect the marketplace."

Intellectual Property and Brainpower Versus AI in Academic Publish; Academe Magazine, AAUP, Spring 2026

Kelly Hand , Academe Magazine, AAUP; Intellectual Property and Brainpower Versus AI in Academic Publish

"The concept of transformation is central to US copyright law—which privileges “transformative” uses of copyrighted material in evaluating “fair use”—and emerging case law on AI. It’s worth thinking about what kind of transformation we value as human readers and writers and as beneficiaries of published academic research—particularly as we reckon with piracy in the training of LLMs and the unchecked growth of the AI industry. Considerations about how academic publications enable AI’s transformative processes extend beyond concerns about emotional authenticity important in creative writing to those about intellectual integrity and factual accuracy. 

Authors, editors, and publishers will need to make consequential IP decisions—including those about settlements in lawsuits over AI piracy, invitations to enter into licensing agreements with AI companies seeking to avoid future lawsuits, and editorial policies and guidelines to prevent the misuse of AI in academic research and writing. Some individuals and organizations, including scholarly publications and presses, will encounter opportunities to “cash in.” However, their relatively modest financial gains facilitate the disproportionate enrichment of AI companies that use copyrighted material for training LLMs. Even if that use is transformative in the strict legal sense, it fails to effect the kind of transformation that depends on the uniquely human capacities for thinking, feeling, and complex analysis. Academic journals and university presses must also protect IP—by upholding ethical standards and principles of copyright law—and commit to publishing human-authored works."

Complaint: ELSEVIER INC., CENGAGE LEARNING, INC., HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, INC., MACMILLAN PUBLISHING GROUP, LLC D/B/A MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS, MCGRAW HILL LLC, SCOTT TUROW, and S.C.R.I.B.E., INC., individually and on behalf of others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. META PLATFORMS, INC. and MARK ZUCKERBERG, Defendants.; May 5, 2026

Complaint: ELSEVIER INC., CENGAGE LEARNING, INC., HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, INC., MACMILLAN PUBLISHING GROUP, LLC D/B/A MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS, MCGRAW HILL LLC, SCOTT TUROW, and S.C.R.I.B.E., INC., individually and on behalf of others similarly situated,

Plaintiffs,

v.

META PLATFORMS, INC. and MARK ZUCKERBERG,

Defendants.

Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg; The New York Times, May 5, 2026

Alexandra Alter , The New York Times; Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg

The class-action lawsuit accuses the tech giant and its founder and chief executive of infringing on authors’ copyrights.

"Five major publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage — and the best-selling novelist Scott Turow have filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

The complaint, which was filed on Tuesday morning in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Meta and Zuckerberg of illegally using millions of copyrighted works to train their artificial intelligence program Llama, and of removing copyright notices and other copyright management information from those works.

The lawsuit asserts that Meta’s engineers relied on pirated books and journal articles to train the program by downloading unlicensed copies through websites like Anna’s Archive, an open source search engine for piracy sites including LibGen and Sci-Hub. The suit also claims that “Zuckerberg himself personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement.”"

Netflix Prevails in ‘Tiger King’ Copyright Case, a Win for ‘Fair Use’ in Documentaries; Variety, April 30, 2026

 Gene Maddaus, Variety; Netflix Prevails in ‘Tiger King’ Copyright Case, a Win for ‘Fair Use’ in Documentaries

"Documentary filmmakers who use unlicensed video clips can breathe a little easier, after an appellate panel reversed itself Thursday in a closely watched copyright case involving Netflix‘s “Tiger King” series.

A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the filmmakers’ use of a 66-second clip from a character’s funeral was sufficiently transformative to qualify for “fair use” protection."

When Copyright Falls Short: Why Celebrities Are Turning to Trademark Law to Fight AI; JDSupra, April 30, 2026

 Kaufman & Canoles, JDSupra; When Copyright Falls Short: Why Celebrities Are Turning to Trademark Law to Fight AI

"The filings come as traditional copyright laws fail to guard against AI-generated content. AI can now generate completely new content that mimics an artist’s voice without outright copying."

Netflix fends off 'Tiger King' copyright claims again on appeal; Reuters, April 30, 2026

Blake Brittain , Reuters; Netflix fends off 'Tiger King' copyright claims again on appeal

"A U.S. appeals court ruled ​for Netflix on Thursday in a cameraman's copyright infringement case against the streaming video company ‌over footage used in its hit 2020 documentary series "Tiger King."

The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Netflix made fair use of one of Timothy Sepi's videos and affirmed its previous ruling that the company did not violate Sepi's rights ​in seven others."

New Report Weighs Pros and Cons of AI; Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2026

Jim Milliot , Publishers Weekly; New Report Weighs Pros and Cons of AI

"A recent survey of 559 book publishing professionals in the U.S. and Canada reflects the current schism in the publishing industry about if and how AI can be effectively and ethically be used. 

The report, "AI Usage Across the North American Book Market, 2025," was sponsored by BISG and BookNet Canada and gathered responses from publishers, librarians and other industry professionals...

The primary concern for survey respondents around AI in the industry is inadequate controls around the use of copyrighted material, with 86% noting the issue."

The Basics Of Copyright For Films; Forbes, April 30, 2026

Schuyler Moore,, Forbes; The Basics Of Copyright For Films

 "The film industry revolves around copyright, so an understanding of the basic issues relating to copyright is critical for understanding almost any film transaction."

The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance; The Atlantic, April 30, 2026

Jacob Noti-Victor and Xiyin Tang, The Atlantic; The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance

"More than 90 lawsuits have been filed by creators against AI companies for copyright infringement. Authors, musicians, visual artists, and news publishers have all accused firms such as OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic of using their copyrighted works to train AI models without permission. (The Atlantic is involved in one such lawsuit, against the AI firm Cohere.) These cases are frequently framed as the defining fight over the future of creative labor and the entertainment industry as a whole. As one of these lawsuits put it, artists are seeking to end “infringement of their rights before their professions are eliminated by a computer program powered entirely by their hard work.”

But the future of creative labor will more likely be decided through a different question within copyright law, one that has received far less attention: To what extent should AI-generated works receive copyright protection at all? In a 2024 case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that a work generated autonomously by an AI system cannot be protected by copyright, because copyright requires a human “author.” The Supreme Court declined to review that decision in March. With the lower-court decision left in place, the question now becomes how much AI content can be incorporated into a work before it becomes mostly or totally uncopyrightable; courts have not yet weighed in on this but may soon.

The Thaler decision (and any future decisions that refine it) will have major economic consequences for the creative industries and the workers they employ."

Copyright Infringement Suits Loom With Unchecked AI Vibe Coding; Bloomberg Law, April 29, 2026

Christopher Suarez, Bill Toth, Anthony Pericolo, Bloomberg Law; Copyright Infringement Suits Loom With Unchecked AI Vibe Coding

"Deferring the job of software coding to artificial intelligence doesn’t immunize that code from copyright risk—it could even increase it, if the person directing the coding has limited oversight over the result.

This is particularly true with “vibe coding,” where developers use high‑level natural language prompts to generate code using AI models, often with limited manual review or modification of the resulting code.

Just as lawyers should check for “hallucinated” citations when writing with large language models, engineers and software development managers need to have human and technical monitoring protocols to account for infringement and licensing risks."

$100 Million Award Made in Suit Over Unlicensed Robert Indiana Art; The New York Times, April 24, 2026

Graham Bowley, The New York Times; $100 Million Award Made in Suit Over Unlicensed Robert Indiana Art

"An art publisher accused in a civil suit of isolating Robert Indiana, the artist, in the final years of his life, has been found to have created unauthorized or adulterated versions of Indiana’s work by a New York jury.

The jury in federal court in Manhattan found in favor of Indiana’s former business partner, the Morgan Art Foundation, a for-profit company, that sued the publisher, Michael McKenzie, on the grounds that he had interfered with its rights by making Indiana works that he did not have the authority to produce.

Among the works cited in the suit were some based on the most famous of Indiana’s works, a depiction of the word “love” in capital letters, with the L and a jauntily tilted O perched atop the V and E. The image is recreated in sculptures that sit in plazas in several cities and on coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets worldwide.

The jury awarded Morgan $102.2 million in damages."

(Some of) The newest stuff at the Library!; Library of Congress Blogs, April 28, 2026

 Neely Tucker, Library of Congress Blogs; (Some of) The newest stuff at the Library!

"Walk into the Library’s annual showcase of new acquisitions and the question always hits you right in the face: Where to start?

What about with this slim copy of Silver Surfer No. 1, the origin story of Marvel Comics’ “Sentinel of the Spaceways,” from the groovy year of 1968? How about this massive law book that’s more than 500 years old? The “Tombstone Edition” of a Philadelphia newspaper from 1765, which documented and amplified the American Colonies loathing of the Stamp Act and presaged the American Revolution?

There’s never really a wrong place to start. This year’s two-hour show-and-tell, held last week, brought hundreds of staffers and guests to look over intriguing displays of the Library’s recently acquired treasures, items spanning the nation, the globe and centuries of time. Many added to already impressive collections of historic figures...

It was a crowded, noisy, upbeat afternoon of discovery and explanation. Conversations buzzed and overlapped; staff experts and curious viewers leaned over display tables from opposite sides, heads together, talking loudly to be heard, gazing down at maps, manuscripts, records, artifacts and things you couldn’t have known existed."

Printify Releases Guide on How to Avoid Copyright Infringement with T-shirts; The National Law Review, April 28, 2026

Press Release, The National Law Review; Printify Releases Guide on How to Avoid Copyright Infringement with T-shirts

"Printify, a leading print-on-demand platform, has announced the release of a comprehensive new guide designed to help entrepreneurs understand how to avoid copyright infringement when creating and selling custom apparel. As the t-shirt business continues to attract new creators, the risk of legal missteps—ranging from cease-and-desist letters to costly lawsuits—has become a major concern across the industry.

The guide delivers a clear, practical breakdown of intellectual property rules, helping sellers navigate the complexities of copyright, trademark, and publicity rights. By combining legal fundamentals with actionable advice, Printify aims to give entrepreneurs the confidence to create and scale their businesses without unnecessary risk.

Launching a t-shirt business has never been more accessible, but legal awareness remains one of the most overlooked aspects of success. With this release, Printify places itself at the center of a safer, more informed approach to building apparel brands."

Devious New AI Tool “Clones” Software So That the Original Creator Doesn’t Hold a Copyright Over the New Version; Futurism, April 26, 2026

Victor Tangermann , Futurism; Devious New AI Tool “Clones” Software So That the Original Creator Doesn’t Hold a Copyright Over the New Version

"The advent of generative AI continues to undermine the very concept of copyright, from entire books shamelessly ripping off authors to tasteless AI slop depicting beloved characters going viral on social media. The sin is foundational: all today’s popular AI tools were built by pillaging copyrighted material without permission.

Even software isn’t safe. As 404 Media reports, a new tool dubbed Malus.sh — pronounced “malice,” to give a subtle clue where this is headed — uses AI to “liberate” a piece of software from existing copyright licenses, essentially creating a “clean room” clone that technically doesn’t infringe on the original code’s copyright."

Anthropic seeks pivotal court win in music publisher lawsuit over AI training; Reuters, April 21, 2026

Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic seeks pivotal court win in music publisher lawsuit over AI training

"Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has asked a California federal court to ​rule in its favor in a copyright lawsuit brought by music publishers Universal Music Group, Concord ‌and ABKCO, arguing it made "fair use" of their song lyrics to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude.

Anthropic's Monday filing addresses the key question for a wave of high-stakes copyright cases brought by creators against tech companies: is it legally permissible to copy millions of copyrighted works ​without permission to train AI models?...

The lawsuit ​is one of dozens of disputes between copyright owners such as authors and news outlets, and tech giants ​including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over the training of their AI systems. Amazon- and Google-backed Anthropic was the first major AI ‌company ⁠to settle one of the cases, agreeing last yearto pay a group of authors $1.5 billion to resolve a class-action lawsuit."

CC’s position on key copyright issues; Creative Commons, April 22, 2026

 Creative Commons ; CC’s position on key copyright issues

"Creative Commons was founded in response to the radical expansion of copyright in the 20th century."

Authors Guild Addresses Publishers’ AI Use; Publishers Weekly, April 21, 2026

 Sam Spratford , Publishers Weekly; Authors Guild Addresses Publishers’ AI Use

"The Authors Guild has released a statement criticizing publishing professionals’ use of AI tools following a report first published in the Bookseller that some editors have been uploading authors’ personal information, including manuscripts, into consumer-facing LLMs like ChatGPT.

“Uploading or inputting a copyrighted work or an author’s personal information into AI systems without permission may constitute a violation of the author’s copyright or right of privacy, and it puts the author’s intellectual property and personal information at risk,” the statement read. “Editors, agents, and others in the industry who have access to authors’ works should not upload any manuscript to or otherwise prompt consumer-facing chatbots with any author’s works without first getting the author’s written permission.”"

Anthropic’s Leaked Code Tests Copyright Challenges in A.I. Era; The New York Times, April 22, 2026

 Meaghan Tobin, The New York Times; Anthropic’s Leaked Code Tests Copyright Challenges in A.I. Era

Artificial intelligence tools are making it faster than ever to reproduce creative work. Does copyright even matter anymore?

"Sigrid Jin was waiting to board a plane when he saw stunning news that artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic had accidentally leaked the source code for Claude Code, its popular A.I. agent. Mr. Jin, 25, an undergraduate student, scrambled to post a copy online. His worried girlfriend quickly texted him: Was he violating copyright law?

Mr. Jin turned to a team of A.I. assistants for a solution. He directed them to rewrite the leaked code in another programming language, then shared that version online. Within hours, more than 100,000 people had liked or linked to it.

Anthropic, one of the leading A.I. companies alongside OpenAI, has said the leak had been caused by human error and, citing copyright violations, demanded that GitHub, an online library of computer code, remove posts sharing the code. Thousands of posts were taken down. But Mr. Jin’s version remains online. He said Anthropic had not asked him to take it down.

It is unclear whether Anthropic, which did not respond to questions from The New York Times, is drawing a distinction with the rewritten code. Mr. Jin said he believed rewriting the code transformed it into a new work, one that Anthropic could not claim ownership over.

He said he was driven less by money or fame than by a desire to make a broader philosophical point. What is the value of copyrighted intellectual property in an era when A.I. can easily replicate not just computer code but art, music and literature in minutes?

“I just wanted to raise some ethical questions in the A.I. agent era,” he said. “Any creative work can be reproduced in a second.”"

Church of Jesus Christ files trademark complaint against podcaster for alleged imitation of brands; DeseretNews, April 19, 2026

Tad Walch, DeseretNews; Church of Jesus Christ files trademark complaint against podcaster for alleged imitation of brands

"A trademark dispute is headed to the courts after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and podcaster John Dehlin failed to reach a solution after five months of negotiations.

The church and its intellectual property entity, Intellectual Reserve Inc., filed a trademark and copyright complaint in federal court Friday that names Dehlin and his Open Stories Foundation.

The lawsuit claims Dehlin willfully and knowingly created confusion by using logos and marks similar to the church’s and by using copyrighted church photographs. 

Dehlin is the founder and host of the podcast “Mormon Stories.” He was excommunicated from the church in 2015."