Ontario Court of Appeal lets OpenAI copyright lawsuit proceed
The Ontario Court of Appeal is allowing a copyright lawsuit filed by Canadian news publishers against OpenAI to proceed in that province after dismissing an appeal by the company.
A coalition of Canadian news outlets which includes The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada launched the lawsuit two years ago.
They argue OpenAI is using their news content to train ChatGPT, breaching copyright and profiting from the use of that content without permission or compensation.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, put forward a jurisdictional challenge and argued the case should be heard in a U.S. courtroom instead. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice concluded the court does have jurisdiction to hear the case.
OpenAI appealed the decision and the court dismissed that appeal Friday.
The decision said OpenAI did not file any evidence showing a judgment in Canada would conflict with any existing United States laws, which would complicate enforcement.
It also said the judge found “the fair and efficient working of the Canadian legal system favoured allowing Canadian authors to bring claims against foreign companies for breaches of Canadian laws.”
The lawsuit, which has dragged on since 2024, is the first Canadian case to address the practice of using copyrighted content to train generative AI systems.
Earlier this year, Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press launched a separate lawsuit against AI company Anthropic.
News and cultural industry groups have called on the federal government to take a stand on how AI systems use copyrighted content, but Ottawa has not indicated any plans to do so or to update the Copyright Act.
Multiple lawsuits dealing with AI systems and copyright are underway in the United States, some dating back to 2023.
That includes a case by a group of publishers including the Toronto Star, Condé Nast and McClatchy alleging Canadian AI company Cohere infringed their copyright by scraping their articles from the internet without the publishers’ permission or compensation.
