Penguin Random House sues OpenAI over ChatGPT copyright infringement
Penguin Random House filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in Munich on 27 March 2026, alleging that ChatGPT was trained on and reproduces content from author Ingo Siegner's copyrighted 'Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss' book series, including texts, illustrations, and proposals for new books. The publisher claims this constitutes unlawful memorization of protected works without authorization.
What happened
Penguin Random House filed a lawsuit against OpenAI at the Landgericht München on 27 March 2026, alleging that ChatGPT reproduces texts and illustrations from author and illustrator Ingo Siegner's 'Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss' book series.
According to the publisher, ChatGPT generates content from the copyrighted works on simple requests in recognizable form, creates illustrations of the character resembling the originals, and independently proposes creating print-ready manuscripts with covers, back cover text, and instructions for self-publishing platforms.
Reported impact
The publisher claims there are clear indicators that Siegner's works were unlawfully used to train the AI system and now exist as 'memorization' in the model, comparable to storage of copyrighted content that the system can reproduce on user requests.
Index analysis
The Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels supported the lawsuit, stating that the conflict over copyright in the AI age is no longer a niche issue and questioning whether AI companies operate with sufficient transparency about their training data.
Governance controls
OpenAI stated it would review the allegations, claiming to respect the rights of authors and rights holders and to be in discussions with many publishers worldwide to allow them to benefit from AI technology possibilities.
Publisher Carina Mathern stated that human creativity is the core of their work as publishers, that they are fundamentally open to AI, but that intellectual property protection is their highest priority.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.