The parties in the consolidated newspaper lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft asked Magistrate Judge Wang to hold a settlement conference to facilitate an arrangement for coordinated depositions of witnesses, including in the book authors’ consolidated lawsuits and lawsuits in California. They say they are close to reaching an arrangement.
They also filed a master chart of the outstanding discovery disputes, with each parties’ respective positions.
Since OpenAI told Magistrate Judge Wang last December that they intended to petition for a transfer of all copyright lawsuits to a Multi-District Litigation court, we have not heard anything further. Coordinating all depositions would be one advantage of transferring the cases to MDL, but it appears that the parties may achieve coordination in the existing cases.