1. Reddit v. Anthropic
Current Status: The Court tentatively grants Reddit’s request for remand. The main dispute in this case has been Reddit’s motion to remand the case to California state court. Readers may recall that that Reddit’s complaint focuses on a breach of Reddit’s terms of service in scraping its users’ reddit posts. This week, the Court issued a tentative order that would grant remand. The tentative order reasoned that each claim alleged by Reddit arose out of alleged contractual obligations and that they involved elements “qualitatively different from the rights protected by the Copyright Act.”
2. Richard Kadrey, et al. v. Meta
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. As discussed previously, the Kadrey Plaintiffs previously requested that the Court permit them to amend their complaint to add contributory infringement and uploading-based claims as well as to conduct limited additional discovery into Meta’s torrenting activities. Further, Plaintiffs requested that the Court allow concurrent briefing for summary judgment regarding liability as well as for class certification. Meta countered by asking that the case instead be stayed pending resolution of summary judgment. Judge Chhabria held a hearing last month regarding this motion during which he denied the request for a stay and provided tentative views, requesting additional briefing from Meta and Plaintiffs.
About a month ago, Meta filed briefing which provided more context from the hearing. Per their briefing, the hearing included a finding by Judge Chhabria that Plaintiffs’ delay in amending their complaint to add contributory infringement claims was “inexcusable.” Meta argued that, based on this finding, Plaintiffs’ requested amendment should be denied. Meta additionally argued that, were the Court to certify the class, the class members should be barred from bringing any claims that could have been brought previously (including claims for contributory infringement or infringement based on training).
Plaintiffs responded with their supplemental briefing in which they argued that despite the Court’s finding that their delay in amending their complaint was “inexcusable,” the amendment should still be permitted because Meta would not be prejudiced and because the delay was not the result of bad faith on Plaintiffs’ part.
Most recently, on March 2, Plaintiffs submitted a letter to the Court complaining that Meta served a supplemental interrogatory response on February 27 asserting for the first time a fair use defense to Plaintiffs’ uploading-based claims. This supplemental response allegedly included new factual assertions that uploading pirated copyrighted works to other data pirates was “more efficient” and an “inherent characteristic of the BitTorrent protocol.” Plaintiffs argue this new defense was improperly submitted without leave of court and over fourteen months after the close of fact discovery. Meta responded by arguing that Plaintiffs were aware of its intent to raise a fair use defense since December 2025 and that no additional fact discovery should be necessary.
It remains to be seen whether this new dispute will factor into the Court's ruling on the pending motion for leave to amend.
3. SDNY Multi-District Litigation
Current Status: Expert reports approach. Fact discovery officially closed on February 26, though not all discovery issues have been resolved yet. This week, the parties wrote to the Court to summarize the state of things. They estimated that the outstanding discovery issues included a number of depositions, the production of additional data reservoirs as ordered by Magistrate Judge Wang, and a few pending motions before Judge Wang.
The parties also estimated that they would serve 35-40 expert reports next month. Given the outstanding discovery issues and the number of expert reports expected, the parties jointly requested that the expert report and MSJ deadlines be extended by two weeks, moving the deadline for opening reports from April 10 to April 24. The Court has not yet ruled on the motion.
An unexpected development from two weeks ago was the Stipulation of Voluntary Dismissal filed by one of the Class Plaintiffs, Matthew Klam. The filing provides no further details, but it is possible that Mr. Klam negotiated a private settlement. The Court has also scheduled a settlement conference for March 30, which may indicate that the parties have reached a point where they are open to settlement.
4. Concord Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
Current Status: The parties prepare for summary judgment. In advance of summary judgment briefing, Plaintiffs submitted a stipulation and proposed order setting a schedule and page limits for potential amici curiae who may submit their own briefing in support of one side or the other. Plaintiffs’ opening summary judgment brief is due March 23, with Anthropic’s opposition/opening briefing due April 20, Plaintiff’s opposition/reply briefing due May 18, and Defendants’ reply briefing due June 8. The hearing is scheduled for July 8. This week, the Court granted the proposed order. We’re looking forward to seeing the arguments and will report as soon as they’re available.
5. Sony v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. As the last remaining plaintiff, Sony is fighting to preserve its DMCA claim. In the past few weeks, Sony submitted a supplemental filing in connection with Udio's pending motion to dismiss, citing a recent California decision (Cordova v. Huneault) where a court allowed a similar DMCA claim to proceed. Sony argues this case supports its claim that Udio illegally bypassed YouTube's security measures to download copyrighted music for AI training.
In response, Udio filed a letter in further support of its motion to dismiss, arguing the Cordova decision is not persuasive. Udio’s key argument is that Cordova is not applicable because it failed to address a critical distinction in the law—the difference between “access controls” (which cannot be bypassed) and “copy controls” (which can be freely circumvented). Udio contends that YouTube's “rolling cipher” technology is a copy-prevention measure, not an access-control measure, and therefore bypassing it is not illegal under the DMCA. Udio maintains that Sony’s DMCA claim should be dismissed with prejudice.
6. UMG Recordings v. Suno
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week was uneventful. Last week, the Court held a status conference between the parties, but no orders have resulted from that hearing yet.
7. Sarah Andersen et al. v. Stability AI, et al.
Current Status: Plaintiffs request names of all of Stability’s enterprise customers. The last few weeks have largely been concerned with Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint rather than any discovery issues. This week, however, the parties filed joint letter briefing on a dispute. Plaintiffs have requested the names and associated usernames for all enterprise customers that Stability has. According to Plaintiffs, this information is pertinent to fair use because it could demonstrate lost business. Stability argues that it should not have to produce the requested names because any information about business lost by Plaintiffs should be in the possession of Plaintiffs. Stability offered a counterproposal: that Plaintiffs identify any customers or potential customers they think may have been affected and then they will “consider providing information regarding any such overlap.”
Plaintiffs appear to have the better side of the argument. The discovery in this case is under protective order, leaving Stability at no risk from providing the information requested, and the request is not particularly burdensome. Stability’s compromise offer also seems obstructionist on its face as it forces Plaintiffs to determine the very information they are seeking through discovery before Stability would have to “consider” providing a response.
8. Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. v. Midjourney
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week involved no significant new litigation events, however, two weeks ago, the parties requested a hearing regarding an informal discovery dispute. The Court held that hearing on March 12. The minutes provide some insight into the discovery issues currently being negotiated behind the scenes. Disney has requested a search of subscriber prompts to Midjourney, including those submitted in Midjourney’s “stealth mode.” The Court asked for an initial search to be done and hit counts provided so that the relative burden of prompt search requests could be evaluated. Disney is also seeking discovery into the development of Midjourney’s 3D modeling capabilities. Midjourney is currently seeking documents related to Disney’s own Generative AI development and its in-house use of such technologies.
9. Hendrix v. Apple
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week saw no significant new filings. As discussed last year, the parties and the Court agreed to relate the present case to another case filed against Apple by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknick. More recently, the Court accepted another request to relate a case by Tasha Alexander against Apple. Based on a hearing held last week, the Court appointed William Dreher from Keller Rohrback and Rohit Nath from Susman Godfrey as interim co-lead counsel. This appointment will be in effect for one year, through the end of January 2027, with reappointment submissions scheduled for the last Friday of December.
Earlier in February, the parties filed an amended complaint which included additional factual allegations regarding the ways in which Apple integrates its models into its products and the manner in which these models have impaired the market for Plaintiffs’ works. These later additions are likely setup for exactly the argument that Kadrey’s Judge Chhabria suggested the plaintiffs in that case should have made to overcome the fair use defense raised by Meta. In particular, the Hendrix class members discuss the manner in which generative AI outputs compete with human authors’ work product based on a 2025 working paper.
10. Disney et al. v. MiniMax & Hailuo AI
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week involved no significant new litigation events. However, last week, the parties began preparing themselves for motions to dismiss with a joint request to extend time for briefing. The Court granted the request in part, setting a deadline for initial motions on April 24, with oppositions due May 8 and replies due May 15. The issue is set for hearing on May 29.