The New York Times Company v. Microsoft Corporation

Case posture

As alleged in the Third Amended Complaint (ECF No. 1461, at 61–65) [§ 51], The New York Times Company asserts direct copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 501 against all defendants, vicarious copyright infringement against Microsoft and specified OpenAI defendants, and removal of copyright management information under 17 U.S.C. § 1202(b)(1) against specified OpenAI defendants.

The court ruling (ECF No. 514, at 42–43) [§ 101]: on April 4, 2025, at the motion-to-dismiss stage, the court dismissed the Times’s common-law unfair-competition by misappropriation claim with prejudice and its 17 U.S.C. § 1202(b)(1) and (b)(3) claims without prejudice.

The court ruling (ECF No. 1449, at 2–5) [§ 102]: on August 6, 2026, the court denied OpenAI’s Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c) motion as moot following voluntary dismissal, dismissed the end-user material-contribution claims and trademark-dilution claims with prejudice, and denied under Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(b) the Times’s request to add new inducement and services-tailored contributory theories against Microsoft.

According to the court docket (MDL ECF Nos. 1696 and 1712; NYT ECF No. 1473; all-case ECF No. 325 in No. 1:25-cv-03483-SHS-OTW, at 1) [§ 152], the reviewed public record reflects summary-judgment motions by the News Plaintiffs, Microsoft and OpenAI, and the October 13, 2026 all-case order recorded a November 20, 2026 reply deadline; the November 3, 2026 review checked 30-entry partial NYT and MDL public RECAP feed windows updated November 2, 2026, without establishing that the schedule was never superseded or that the dockets were complete.

As stated by OpenAI in its summary-judgment notice (MDL ECF No. 1712, at 1 n. 1) [§ 70], OpenAI, Inc. changed its name to OpenAI Foundation in October 2025.

Issues addressed in the record

As alleged in the Third Amended Complaint (ECF No. 1461, ¶¶ 167–171, at 61–62; Prayer for Relief ¶ 3, at 66) [§ 52], the Times contends that defendants copied its works for model training and generated infringing outputs, and seeks destruction under 17 U.S.C. § 503(b) of models and training sets incorporating Times works.