A major legal battle between OpenAI and a coalition of Canadian media companies will move forward in Ontario after a court ruling on Friday confirmed that the case falls under provincial jurisdiction.
Background of the Case
In November 2024, several prominent Canadian publishers — including Postmedia Network Inc. (publisher of the Financial Post), CBC/Radio-Canada, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. — collectively filed a lawsuit against OpenAI Inc.
The media organizations accused OpenAI of “regularly breaching copyright” and violating online terms of use by scraping large volumes of news content from their websites. The data, they claim, was used to train AI models and power products such as ChatGPT.
The publishers emphasized the value of their work, stating that news outlets invest hundreds of millions of dollars to report critical Canadian stories. They further alleged that OpenAI has profited from their content without authorization or compensation.
OpenAI’s Defense and Jurisdiction Challenge
In September 2024, OpenAI filed a motion with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, seeking to dismiss or suspend the lawsuit. The company argued that Ontario lacked jurisdiction since its commercial operations are primarily conducted outside the province.
However, the Ontario court disagreed. In its Friday ruling, the court determined that “a good, arguable case has been made” showing that the alleged copyright breaches are connected to Ontario.
The ruling emphasized that Canada’s legal framework supports allowing Canadian creators to pursue claims against foreign entities that may have infringed upon Canadian copyright laws.
Court Decision and Financial Award
Following its decision, the court allowed the case to proceed in Ontario. It also ordered OpenAI to pay $260,000 in legal costs to the consortium of media companies.
This marks a significant win for Canadian publishers, who view this as a precedent-setting case for the protection of intellectual property rights in the era of artificial intelligence.
Global Context: Similar Lawsuits in the U.S.
This is not the only lawsuit OpenAI faces. In the United States, several media organizations have launched similar copyright actions.
In April 2024, eight newspaper publishers, including the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, filed a joint lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft Corp., accusing them of using millions of copyrighted news articles without permission or payment.
Additionally, The New York Times filed its own high-profile lawsuit in December 2023, making similar claims of unauthorized data use for AI model training.
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