In Tremblay v. OpenAI, Magistrate Judge Illman denied the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery from third-party Reuters to produce information relevant to any licensing deal with Meta. Tremblay argued that this information is relevant to whether a licensing market for content existed at the time OpenAI engaged in its unauthorized use of the plaintiffs’ works. Judge Illman ruled that the plaintiff can seek such information from OpenAI.
Here, the court finds that Plaintiffs have sought what is undeniably confidential commercial information (if not trade secrets) from one non-party, Reuters, about its relationship with another non-party, Meta. The court further finds that while Plaintiffs have made a clear case that OpenAI does not possess the particular documents at issue here – that is, those underlying the business affairs between Reuters and Meta – what Plaintiffs have not done is to even mention (let alone convincingly establish) why the essence of this information (i.e., its upshot or import, which is merely information about the existence of a market for licensing copyrighted “textual data” to train an AI model) cannot be either obtained from OpenAI, or by expert witness testimony, or by any other means that would not involve prying into the confidential commercial information of two non-parties. Moreover, the court finds that the marginal relevance of the information Plaintiffs seek is substantially outweighed by the burden its production would pose to the non-parties whose rights would be implicated by that production. At bottom, the court finds that Plaintiffs have not demonstrated a substantial need for the discovery they seek, and that the requested discovery is not proportional to the needs of the case. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ Motion (dkt. 314) is DENIED.
