OpenAI's Use Of ANI Content To Train ChatGPT Is Not Prima Facie Copyright Infringement: Delhi High Court
The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed Asian News International's (ANI) plea for an interim injunction against OpenAI in its suit alleging copyright infringement over the alleged use of ANI's content to train ChatGPT.
Justice Amit Bansal held that "ANI has failed to make out a prima facie case for grant of interim injunction."
Ruling on four issues framed in the suit, with findings on the first and third issues delivered together, the Court upheld its territorial jurisdiction to hear the case but ruled against ANI on the merits.
On the use of ANI's content for training, the court held that OpenAI's "act of storing ANI's original literary works for training LLMs underlying ChatGPT" falls within the fair dealing exception under the Copyright Act and "does not amount to infringement under Section 51."
On ChatGPT's responses, the court held that the outputs were "not substantially similar to ANI's original literary works." It further held that responses generated using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology also "do not amount to infringement under Section 51."
The court further found that "ANI has failed to satisfy this Court that any memorisation or regurgitation of ANI's original literary works has happened in the responses generated by ChatGPT."
Refusing interim relief, Justice Bansal held, "Balance of convenience is also against grant of interim injunction. Irreparable injury would be caused not only to OpenAI but also to the public at large if an interim injunction is granted in favour of ANI at this time."
The interim injunction application was accordingly dismissed.
The court also recorded its appreciation for the counsel and the amicus curiae "who appeared in the matter and rendered invaluable assistance."
Background:
ANI Media Pvt Ltd, the Indian news agency, sued OpenAI in the Delhi High Court in November 2024, becoming the first lawsuit of its kind in India against an AI company.
ANI's case was that OpenAI trained ChatGPT on its copyrighted news content without a licence, and that ChatGPT sometimes generates responses that reproduce or draw on ANI's work, including instances where allegedly fabricated content was falsely attributed to the agency.
ANI asked the court for an urgent interim injunction to stop OpenAI from storing, reproducing, or otherwise using its copyrighted material to train or run ChatGPT, and to have ChatGPT's access to ANI's published content disabled altogether.
The matter first came up before Justice Amit Bansal on November 19, 2024. The court issued summons to OpenAI, which were accepted on the spot by its counsel.
Senior advocate Amit Sibal, appearing for OpenAI, immediately raised a preliminary objection to the case even being heard in an Indian court, arguing that OpenAI's servers are located in the United States and that Indian courts therefore lack territorial jurisdiction.
OpenAI also made a voluntary disclosure at that first hearing: without conceding any wrongdoing, it told the court it had already blocklisted ANI's website (aninews.in) back in October 2024, meaning that domain would be excluded from future training of its models.
This didn't resolve ANI's claims about past use, but it was recorded as a concession on the record.
Recognising that the case raised genuinely novel legal questions with no existing Indian precedent, Justice Bansal laid out four issues at the heart of the dispute:
- whether OpenAI's storing of ANI's content to train ChatGPT amounts to copyright infringement;
- whether generating responses to users using that content is itself an infringing act;
- whether OpenAI's conduct could be defended as fair dealing under Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957.
Whether the courts in India have jurisdiction to entertain the present lawsuit considering that the servers of the defendants are located in the United States of America.
The court also noted that similar disputes were playing out abroad, most notably the New York Times' case against OpenAI in the US, but that there was no authoritative ruling anywhere yet that Indian courts could draw on.
Given the stakes and the lack of precedent, the court appointed two amici curiae to assist — IP lawyer Adarsh Ramanujan and Dr Arul George Scaria, a law professor at NLSIU.