US court consolidates copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft
A US judicial panel consolidated 12 copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft into a single New York case on April 3, 2025. Authors and news outlets including The New York Times allege the companies used their copyrighted material without permission to train large language models. The consolidated case will be presided over by US District Judge Sidney Stein.
What happened
The US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated 12 copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft into a single case in New York on Thursday, April 3, 2025.
California lawsuits brought by authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sarah Silverman, Michael Chabon and Junot Díaz were transferred to Manhattan federal court to join cases from news outlets including The New York Times and authors including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, George R.R. Martin, George Saunders and Jodi Picoult.
The plaintiffs alleged that OpenAI and Microsoft used their copyrighted works without consent or compensation to train large language models underlying products such as ChatGPT and Copilot. OpenAI had proposed consolidating the cases in northern California, while most plaintiffs opposed consolidation, arguing their cases were too different to combine.
Index analysis
The panel stated that consolidation would 'serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses' and 'promote the just and efficient conduct of this litigation', allowing a single judge to coordinate discovery, streamline pretrial proceedings and eliminate inconsistent rulings.
The panel noted that 'given the novel and complicated nature of the technology, there likely will be overlapping experts' across the cases and that consolidation would 'conserve the resources of the parties, their counsel and the judiciary'.
Governance controls
OpenAI stated: 'We welcome this development and look forward to making it clear in court that our models are trained on publicly available data, grounded in fair use, and supportive of innovation.'
The cases will be presided over by US District Judge Sidney Stein. Tech companies have argued that their use of copyrighted works to train AI is permitted under the doctrine of 'fair use', which allows for the unauthorised use of copyrighted works in some circumstances.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.