As artificial intelligence technologies accelerate across sectors—from healthcare and finance to transportation and media—they are driving a new generation of complex, high-stakes litigation. Disputes arising from the development, training, and deployment of AI systems present novel issues at the intersection of intellectual property, data rights, privacy, and accountability for automated decision-making. These cases are defining how existing legal frameworks apply to emerging technologies and setting the standards for responsible AI use.
Susman Godfrey stands at the forefront of AI litigation, having secured precedent-setting rulings and landmark settlements that are shaping this rapidly evolving area of law. The firm continues to lead sophisticated, high-impact matters that establish meaningful legal guardrails for next-generation technologies.
- Bartz v. Anthropic. Serving as lead counsel to a certified class of rights-owners, secured a landmark settlement requiring Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to rightsholders whose books were downloaded by Anthropic from the databases “Library Genesis” (“LibGen”) and “Pirate Library Mirror” (“PiLiMi”). Anthropic will pay approximately $3,000 per class work. Read more.
- New York Times v. OpenAI and Microsoft. Serving as lead counsel to the New York Times in a massive copyright infringement action against Microsoft and OpenAI. In a landmark case that marks the first time that a newspaper publisher has sued the developers of a large language model, the New York Times alleges that Microsoft and OpenAI have copied millions of its articles to train ChatGPT and that the chatbot’s responses to user queries unlawfully reproduce the newspaper’s content. Judge Sidney Stein (SDNY) has denied motions to dismiss.
- In Re OpenAI Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation. Serving as Court-appointed lead counsel to a putative class of book authors bringing copyright infringement claims against OpenAI and Microsoft in the Multi-District Litigation pending before Judge Sidney Stein (SDNY). Class plaintiffs are best-selling authors who allege their books were illegally pirated and used to develop OpenAI and Microsoft’s large language models, including the models used in ChatGPT.
- ParTec v. Microsoft. Representing German supercomputing pioneer ParTec AG—which has helped design some of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe—in litigation against Microsoft. ParTec alleges that the infrastructure powering Microsoft’s AI services and used for AI training and inferencing infringes ParTec patents relating to the dynamic assignment of computing resources and tasks.
- Nvidia Class Action. Representing putative classes of book authors bringing copyright infringement claims against Nvidia pending in the Northern District of California. Class plaintiffs are best-selling authors who allege their books were illegally pirated and used to develop Nvidia’s large language models.
- Databricks Class Action. Representing putative classes of book authors bringing copyright infringement claims against Databricks and Mosaic ML pending in the Northern District of California. Class plaintiffs are best-selling authors who allege their books were illegally pirated and used to develop Databrick’s and Mosaic’s large language models.
- Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. et al. v. Perplexity AI Inc. Serving as lead counsel to Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. and Merriam-Webster Inc., which allegethat Perplexity AI Inc., a startup recently valued at $20 billion, have infringed their copyrights to train its AI “answer engine” and by reproducing their content in responses to user queries. The case is currently in discovery.
