1. Richard Kadrey, et al. v. Meta
Current Status: Plaintiffs move to amend their complaint. Two weeks ago, Plaintiffs moved to amend their consolidated complaint to revise the class definition and add an additional claim for contributory copyright infringement. Although the proposed amendments are filed under seal, the memorandum of law accompanying the proposed amendments suggests that the new contributory copyright infringement claim is intended to capture instances where Meta uploaded the asserted works in the course of seeding torrents for the various shadow-libraries from which they sourced training data. This continues the ongoing trend of litigating issues peripheral to GAI training while the courts struggle through the fair-use issues that will ultimately decide the outcome of these cases.
2. SDNY Multi-District Litigation
Current Status: Judge Stein dismisses several Ziff Davis claims, maintains most. This week, the Court ruled on OpenAI’s motion to dismiss claims by Plaintiff Ziff Davis, granting dismissal as to Ziff’s common law unjust enrichment and circumvention of technological measures claims, as well as granting in part OpenAI’s motion as to Ziff’s trademark dilution claim.
For unjust enrichment, Judge Stein explained that the rights protected by copyright and the common law cause of action were “equivalent” and thus that common law unjust enrichment was preempted. For circumvention of technological measures, Judge Stein did not find that a robots.txt file was an effective access control, comparing it to a “keep off the grass” sign in that it relies on readers to decide to comply rather than enforcing any kind of access control itself. With respect to trademark dilution, Judge Stein narrowed the dispute by eliminating certain alleged violations which involved marks that were insufficiently famous. Judge Stein also denied Ziff’s motion for leave to amend their complaint to add additional information related to their circumvention of technological measures claims, finding that the amendment would be futile.
The Class and News plaintiffs have also continued to oppose OpenAI’s efforts to reverse the magistrate judge’s order requiring OpenAI to produce 20 million chat logs and finding that OpenAI had waived privilege as to its reasons for deleting various records of its torrenting activities. Finally, the Court has stayed a number of proceedings for more minor defendants until it resolves summary judgment motions. Separately, OpenAI has moved to stay Ziff Davis’ case until summary judgment is resolved. These summary judgment motions represent another major decision point for AI copyright litigation, with the issue of fair use again at the forefront. Check back in the next year as we track each step of the process.
3. UMG Recordings v. Suno
Current Status: UMG requests a revised schedule following Warner Bros. settlement. This week, the parties filed a joint motion requesting an approximately three-month extension to the close of fact discovery and all subsequent events, stating that this would allow discovery disputes to be resolved and avoid disputes regarding missing information. Judge Saylor granted the motion.
The big issue subject to the delay is UMG’s motion to amend its complaint. Over a month ago, UMG Recordings began pursuing the same amendments to its complaint in this matter as it did in UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs, adding additional claims regarding the circumvention of technological measures to download materials from YouTube. Suno then filed its sur-reply which argued that UMG has failed to distinguish between access controls and copy controls, stating that YouTube’s rolling cipher is the latter and thus that it is not a valid basis for circumvention claims. This rolling-cipher issue is an interesting technicality. If the rolling cipher prevents access to content, then circumventing it could be actionable under the DMCA. If all the rolling cipher does is prevent copying (or in this case, make it marginally more difficult), then the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions may not apply.
On the Suno settlement issue, Warner Bros. and its subsidiaries sent a letter to Judge Saylor stating that they had stipulated to voluntary dismissal with Suno, leaving UMG and other plaintiffs still in the case.
4. Concord Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
Current Status: Concord to depose Anthropic’s CEO, but will have to produce it’s prompts. The ongoing scuffle over Anthropic’s “motion for clarification of protective order” regarding material from the Bartz litigation has continued this week. Last week, Plaintiffs filed an objection to the request characterizing it as “an attempt to weaponize the Protective Order . . . and immunize Anthropic from future liability.” Plaintiffs pointed out that Anthropic was unable to identify any instances of alleged violation which would motivate its request for clarification. This week, Anthropic filed a reply in which it did not identify any express violation of the Protective Order but nonetheless argued that the distinctions Plaintiffs drew with certain cases suggested that they had violated the order.
This week, Magistrate Judge Susan Van Keulen granted Plaintiffs’ request to depose Anthropic founder and CEO Dario Amodei. These kinds of “apex” depositions are always hard fought, and this one counts as a major win for the plaintiffs assuming Judge Van Keulen upholds the ruling.
Finally, Judge Van Keulen ruled on Anthropic’s request for information related to Plaintiffs’ investigation into its LLMs which yielded the reproduced lyrics included in their complaint. The order required the production of prompts and outputs submitted by investigators during the post-suit investigation, reasoning that Plaintiffs intended for their investigator, Michael Candore, to testify that the prompts used to bypass Anthropic’s guardrails were the sort that “anyone could do” and thus that Plaintiffs had placed the investigation at issue and waived privilege to some extent. However, Plaintiffs were not required to produce prompts crafted by counsel but not given to investigators or witnesses. Additionally, the order did not require the production of pre-suit investigatory prompts, reasoning that Plaintiffs had previously been required to provide statistical information (i.e., the number of attempts per positive result) that would suffice for cross-examination.
5. UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Following a number of settlements, this week saw no notable new filings on the docket. Within the past month, Plaintiffs UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Atlantic Recording Corp., Rhino Entertainment Co., and Warner Music all filed stipulations of dismissal, leaving Sony Music Entertainment as the lone plaintiff in the case. A joint status conference previously set for December 12th was cancelled, but a replacement conference has not yet been scheduled. Check back soon to see how the case continues forward.
6. Sarah Andersen et al. v. Stability AI, et al.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week’s filings were limited to minor discovery topics, such as Defendants’ supplementation of their interrogatory responses and the submission of letter briefing regarding Defendant Runway AI’s effort to obtain expert reports and discovery responses from another litigation involving Plaintiffs. The next management conference is not until January 20th, so it may be several weeks before this issue is resolved.
7. Reddit v. Anthropic
Current Status: Case schedule set. This week, the Court held a joint case management conference and set a schedule, with the hearing on Reddit’s motion to remand to state court scheduled for January 27th and trial set for February 14th, 2028.
Additionally, the Court noted that the parties completed an unsuccessful round of mediation in August this year and set an ADR deadline for August 21st, 2026. Finally, Anthropic submitted the order dismissing several of Ziff Davis’ claims in the multi-district litigation to the Court as a relevant decision to its opposition to Reddit’s motion for remand. The suggestion appears to be that Reddit’s state court claims are preempted by federal copyright law and thus that the case is not suited for resolution in state court.
8. Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. v. Midjourney
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Over a month ago, Plaintiffs and Midjourney filed a joint stipulation to consolidate this action with the related action involving Warner Bros. Additionally, three weeks ago, the Court ordered that the case be referred to a private mediator, with the alternative dispute resolution proceeding to be completed by August 19, 2026.
Nonetheless, the case is moving forward in the interim according to the pretrial schedule issued several weeks ago marking August 21, 2026 as the deadline to file a report relating to the outcome of mediation. Deadlines resume afterward, with non-expert discovery closing on September 21, 2026, and expert discovery closing November 9, 2026.
9. Hendrix v. Apple
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. As discussed previously, the parties and the Court agreed to relate the present case to another case filed against Apple by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknick. Several weeks ago, the Court accepted another request to relate a case by Tasha Alexander against Apple. At the moment, class leadership has not been determined, with a hearing on Plaintiffs’ motions for leadership set for January 27th next year.
10. Disney et al. v. Minimax & Hailuo AI
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Months ago, Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. filed suit against AI companies offering video generation products which is similar to the one filed by Disney against Midjourney. The case has been assigned to Judge Stanley Blumenfeld and Magistrate Judge Charles Eick. So far, this case has not yet had any notable activity but continue to check back and we will update you when it does.