'No Unnecessary Reporting On Parties' Submissions': Delhi High Court In ANI's Copyright Infringement Suit Against OpenAI

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday indicated that there will be no “unnecessary reporting” by media on the submission filed by parties involved in the copyright infringement suit filed by news agency Asian News International (ANI) against OpenAI Inc, which founded ChatGPT.

ANI has accused OpenAI of unauthorisedly using its original news content.

The development ensued after Senior Advocate Amit Sibal appearing for OpenAI today brought the attention of the Court to various news reports based on the intervention application filed by the Federation of Indian Publishers and OpenAI's reply to the same.

Calling the situation unfortunate, Justice Amit Bansal orally said:

“That I am indicating. No unnecessary reporting at least on the submissions of parties.”

During the hearing today, the Court was informed that two intervention applications have been filed in the suit by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) and the Federation of Indian Publishers.

Strongly opposing the intervention application filed by the Federation of Indian Publishers, Sibal said that OpenAI has filed a reply opposing the said application. He said that the Federation has not filed any resolution authorizing the filing of an intervention application.

Sibal then referred to various news reports and said that OpenAI's reply as well as the filing of the intervention application was already released to the press. Sibal was referring to news articles titled “OpenAI faces new copyright case, from global book publishers in India” and “OpenAI asks Indian court to throw out book publishers challenge in copyright battle.”

We filed a reply to the intervention, the reply was released to the media, Sibal said.

On this, Justice Bansal told the Federation's counsel: “Why did you put all this in the press? It's unfortunate….“

Sibal said that the Federation neither has any claims to have any copyright in the subject matter nor does it have appropriate authorization from its members to file the intervention application. He said that the Federation was not authorized by any owner of the copyright content.

On this, Advocate Siddhant Kumar appearing for ANI said that diversity in views is important in the issue for the Court so far as copyright holders are concerned.

Sibal also raised objection to the territorial jurisdiction of the suit and said that the Court here does not have the jurisdiction to hear the issue.

He said that as per the terms of use of OpenAI, if the dispute relates to the response, it either goes to mandatory arbitration or in cases of infringement, then the exclusive jurisdiction lies with the Courts in California which will be governed by California law.

The counsel appearing for DNPA told the Court that the Association was supporting ANI's case but the intervention will be restricted to legal submissions only.

The Court issued a notice in the two intervention applications and directed OpenAI to file replies to the same within two weeks.

The Court clarified that if it allows the intervention application, the scope of the suit shall not be expanded and intervenors will be confined to making submissions on legal issues only.

It further said that OpenAI's objection to the territorial jurisdiction will be considered while hearing ANI's interim injunction application.

The matter will now be heard on February 21, March 11 and 18 at 2:30 PM. The Court will first hear amici curiae Advocate Adarsh Ramanujan and Dr. Arul George Scaria (Professor of Law at National Law School of India University) followed by submissions by ANI, OpenAI and the intervenors.

Summons in the suit were issued in November last year.

OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research organization headquartered in California. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left the company in 2018. Open AI has founded ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. This is the first lawsuit in India against ChatGPT.

ANI has alleged that its original news content is being “exploited for commercial gain” by OpenAI.

ANI's suit alleges that ChatGPT verbatim reproduces ANI's original content in response to users' queries on a real-time basis.

It is ANI's case that ChatGPT has been accrediting it with statements and news that never occurred.

It has been averred that such instances, which are “known as hallucinations”, pose a real threat to the news agency's reputation and spread of fake news which may cause public disorder.

Title: ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI Inc & Anr.