Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

Case posture

As alleged in the Fourth Amended Consolidated Complaint (ECF No. 702, Count I, ¶¶ 100–105; Count IV, ¶¶ 120–126) [§ 51], the plaintiffs claim that Meta copied their books for Llama training and uploaded or distributed works through BitTorrent, asserting direct and contributory copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. §§ 106, 501.

As stated by Meta in its answer (ECF No. 714, at 22–23, First and Sixth Affirmative Defenses) [§ 71], Meta asserts fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107 and contends that any distribution during BitTorrent downloading of training datasets was de minimis and did not transfer an identifiable or usable copy of a copyrighted work.

As stated by the court in its June 25, 2025 order on cross-motions for partial summary judgment (ECF No. 598, at 1, 40) [§ 100], the court denied the authors’ motion and granted Meta summary judgment on its fair-use defense under 17 U.S.C. § 107 to copying these thirteen authors’ books for LLM training, on the record presented.

As stated by the court in that order (ECF No. 598, at 5, 14) [§ 101], the summary-judgment result concerned the individual named plaintiffs and did not establish that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train language models is lawful generally.

As stated by the court in its June 27, 2025 order (ECF No. 601, at 1–2 & n.1) [§ 102], the court granted Meta partial summary judgment on the authors’ copyright-management-information-removal claim under 17 U.S.C. § 1202(b)(1), while leaving whether Meta distributed their books and whether such distribution was fair use unaddressed.

As stated by the court in its March 25, 2026 amendment order (ECF No. 700, at 1, 6–7) [§ 103], the court granted leave to add a contributory-infringement claim based on alleged uploads to a torrenting network and denied the then-pending motion to open class discovery.

According to the court docket’s October 29, 2026 text-only case-management minute entry, reproduced on the court’s public calendar [§ 152], the parties in Kadrey were directed to begin class discovery.

According to the court docket entry reproduced on the public calendar [§ 154], the court revoked Boies Schiller’s status as interim class counsel in Kadrey and said it would revisit the appointment of interim class counsel.

Issues addressed in the record

As stated by the court in its June 25, 2025 order (ECF No. 598, at 14–15, 40) [§ 104], the separate claim concerning distribution during torrenting was outside that summary-judgment decision.

Review scope

According to the court docket entry reproduced on the court’s public calendar, the latest case-management entry inspected for this draft is dated October 29, 2026; this record was reviewed on November 3, 2026 against that entry, the three identified orders, the amended complaint and Meta’s answer, without a complete district-court or appellate docket audit [§ 153].