1. SDNY Multi-District Litigation
Current Status: OpenAI answers; News Plaintiffs move to compel. This past week saw only a handful of filings due to the holiday season. OpenAI filed its answer to Ziff Davis’ First Amended Complaint—which Microsoft had answered weeks ago—though the Answer contains few notable entries. OpenAI largely denied Ziff’s additional allegations and advanced the same affirmative defenses as Microsoft.
Additionally, several of the News Plaintiffs filed a motion to compel Microsoft to produce approximately 8.1 million output logs containing News Plaintiffs’ names and web domains from Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) in a searchable format. The News Plaintiffs have been seeking this discovery for some time and state in their motion that Microsoft is in a position to produce the logs but has delayed production as a litigation tactic. Plaintiffs state that these logs are relevant because they provide evidence that can be used to prove direct infringement and to investigate so-called “pink-slime” outputs—low quality journalistic text that could evidence market harm to News Plaintiffs.
Finally, Ziff Davis requested an extension to file an opposition to OpenAI’s motion to stay. Although the Court granted the motion, extending the response deadline to January 8th and reply deadline to January 15th, it is still not clear whether Ziff Davis will manage to hang on or be sidelined while the Court resolves summary judgment for Plaintiffs that have been involved in the litigation for longer.
2. Concord Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
Current Status: The Court denies Anthropic clarification of the Protective Order. The Court is having none of Anthropic’s supposed confusion and accusations. Anthropic had filed a motion seeking clarification of the Protective Order and intimated that Plaintiffs have misused confidential information obtained during this litigation and the Bartz case, in which the same lawyers appeared. Anthropic did not identify any concrete examples of misuse but instead expressed concern and requested that the Court clarify what kinds of “use” are prohibited. In its order denying the motion, the Court noted that a number of cases cited during briefing were relevant to the meaning of “use” but otherwise declined to modify the scope of the Protective Order.
Other squabbles between the parties have also continued this week. Anthropic filed a motion for relief from Magistrate Judge van Keulen’s recent order which denied Anthropic access to pre-suit prompts but required production of post-suit prompts. They argue that this deprives them of the ability to delineate between third party prompts and Plaintiff-constructed prompts, the latter of which they say cannot show secondary liability because they were initiated by Plaintiffs themselves.
3. Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. v. Midjourney
Current Status: Informal discovery conference scheduled for the new year. This particular matter has been slow to start, with largely administrative filings thus far. Late last year, Plaintiffs and Midjourney filed a joint stipulation to consolidate this action with the related action involving Warner Bros. Additionally, the case received a pretrial schedule 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 on November 9, 2026.
This week, the Court scheduled an “informal discovery conference” for January 12th, asking the parties to provide a joint status update on January 8th. Check back soon to see how the case develops in 2026.
4. UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Following a number of settlements, the past weeks have seen no notable new filings. 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.
5. UMG Recordings v. Suno
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. 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 is not a valid basis for circumvention claims. Additionally, several weeks ago Warner Bros. and its subsidiaries addressed a letter to Judge Saylor stating that they had stipulated to voluntary dismissal with Suno, leaving UMG and other plaintiffs still in the case. This week saw no significant new filings.
6. Sarah Andersen et al. v. Stability AI, et al.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week saw no new filings on the docket. As a summary of where the case stands, recent filings have been 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 a few weeks before these issues pick up steam again.
7. Richard Kadrey, et al. v. Meta
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Three 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. There were no significant new filings in the past week.
8. Reddit v. Anthropic
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Two weeks ago, 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. Anthropic also 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. This week saw no significant new filings.
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, 2026.
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.
Although the case has seen little movement, Judge Stanley Blumenfeld issued an order to show cause in the last week of 2025 in which he noted that the complaint had been served more than 90 days ago and yet Disney had not yet filed proof of service. Disney was ordered to explain why the case should not be dismissed for lack of prosecution by December 29th. Disney responded on Christmas Eve, explaining that it has made efforts to serve Defendants but has been unsuccessful due to difficulties serving foreign parties. Disney also noted that Rule 4(m) (which sets forth the requirement to serve defendants within 90 days) has been found not to apply where all defendants are foreign companies.