1. Richard Kadrey, et al. v. Meta
Current Status: Plaintiffs file their amended complaint. As we discussed last week, the Court “reluctantly” permitted Plaintiffs to file a fourth Amended Complaint which added contributory infringement claims against Meta based on its seeding of torrented books. The order was nothing short of scathing, taking Plaintiffs to task for not bringing these claims much earlier in the case but ultimately relenting to avoid harming absent class members.
This week, Plaintiffs filed their Fourth Amended Complaint. The additions themselves were unremarkable and generally track the existing contributory infringement theory claiming that Meta made copyrighted works available to third parties while using BitTorrent software to acquire the works.
2. SDNY Multi-District Litigation
Current Status: Expert discovery ramping up – Court prepares to stay minor plaintiffs’ cases. Fact discovery is closed, but far from over. The parties estimated that the outstanding discovery issues included a number of outstanding depositions, the production of additional data reservoirs as ordered by Magistrate Judge Wang, and a few pending motions before Judge Wang.
Expert discovery is just ramping up. The parties estimated that they would serve 35-40 expert reports this month. Currently, opening reports are scheduled for April 24th with non-burden reports and summary judgment briefing to follow. Additionally, the Court ordered briefing on the remaining discovery issues, which the parties proposed a schedule for this week. If the Court adopts the proposed schedule, briefing will begin on April 29.
Finally, the Court issued a show cause order to two plaintiffs: Gracenote Media Services and Encyclopaedia Britannica, asking why their cases should not be stayed pending the resolution of summary judgment in the other active cases. Those Plaintiffs have not yet provided a response—which is due April 15—but it is likely that their cases will be stayed. Thus far, these plaintiffs have not been especially involved in filings. More active plaintiffs like the New York Times are likely to be the ones spearheading summary judgment efforts.
3. Hendrix v. Apple
Current Status: Defendants answer Plaintiffs’ consolidated complaint. Early in February, the parties filed an amended consolidated 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. This week, Apple filed an answer in which it admitted that its models were trained on copyrighted works but which largely disclaimed Plaintiffs’ allegations as conclusory or simply reciting text from sources which speak for themselves.
4. Reddit v. Anthropic
Current Status: Case remanded to state court. The parties have been fighting over federal-question jurisdiction for months. Reddit insists that its claims for violation of its terms of use are contractual, and distinct from the rights protected by the Copyright Act. Three weeks ago, the Court issued a tentative order granting remand, which the parties argued at a hearing two weeks ago. This week, the parties received their answer: the case will be remanded to state court.
5. UMG Recordings v. Suno
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week was uneventful. Two weeks ago, the Court held a status conference between the parties, but no notable orders have resulted from that hearing yet.
6. Concord Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
Current Status: Motions in limine and amicus briefs. Last week we discussed Plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment, which presented an argument that Anthropic engaged in copyright infringement and was unable to excuse the infringement as fair use. This week brought a flood of additional pre-trial filings including seven motions in limine by Plaintiffs and two from Anthropic. Each was generally directed at preventing certain expert witnesses from providing testimony at trial, but given the heavy level of redaction throughout, it is difficult to discern the exact testimony any of these experts intends to provide.
Additionally, this week saw the filing of the first two amicus briefs in support of Plaintiffs. The first brief, filed by the Recording Industry Association of America and other similar entities, provided additional market dilution argument. The brief heavily discussed the recent Kadrey v. Meta summary judgment decision and presented public documents from a number of generative music companies which boasted about the amount of AI-generated music that was now in circulation and the inability of consumers to differentiate it from human-made music. The second, filed by the Association of American Publishers and related entities, argued that LLM training was not transformative and that empirical analysis showed that it was, effectively, a copying of textual content into the model’s weights.
7. Sarah Andersen et al. v. Stability AI, et al.
Current Status: The Court grants Plaintiffs request for enterprise customer information. As discussed recently, Plaintiffs requested information related to Stability AI’s enterprise customers in an interrogatory. Stability refused to provide it, saying that Plaintiffs should be able to determine any business they lost and claiming concern over the confidentiality of the information. This week, the Court ordered Stability to answer the interrogatory, noting that any confidentiality concerns were adequately addressed by existing protective orders.
Another dispute has also arisen between Plaintiffs and DeviantArt regarding class certification, which the parties filed joint letter briefing on this week. Plaintiffs have asked DeviantArt to provide contact information for users whose work was used to train DeviantArt’s CLIP-token model as well as all other users who have uploaded at least one Deviation (i.e., any work of art) to DeviantArt. DeviantArt objects that this request is overbroad.
8. Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. v. Midjourney
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. week involved no significant new litigation events, however, three 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, which it filed a motion on last week.
9. Disney et al. v. MiniMax & Hailuo AI
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Three weeks ago, 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.
Last week the parties submitted another stipulation seeking to amend the briefing schedule. If adopted, the stipulation would require defendants’ initial motions on April 10, with Plaintiffs’ oppositions due May 1 and replies due May 15. The stipulation retained the May 29th hearing date. This week included no additional docket movement, so it remains to be seen what final dates the Court will select.
10. Sony v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Following a number of settlements, recent weeks have seen few new filings. Late last year, 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.
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.