Two other organizations filed amicus briefs against Meta to support the Kadrey book authors. Both the Copyright Alliance and American Publishers Association filed briefs, bringing the total on the side of the Kadrey book authors to 4 amici compared to only 2 amici on Meta’s side.
If we focus on the total extra pages of argument that the Kadrey plaintiffs ultimately received with the addition of amici, Judge Chhabria’s allowance of all amicus briefs without the need for seeking permission after Prof. Rebecca Tushnet asked for motion to file one turned out to slightly benefit, at least timing wise, the Kadrey plaintiffs.
At the time of Judge Chhabria’s general order on April 1 (the same day he granted Tushnet’s motion for leave to file an amicus), others had only 2 more days to file an amicus brief in support of Meta. EFF did. But no one else.
Meanwhile, others had 10 days to file an amicus brief in support of Kadrey. Of course, others who might have wanted to support Meta could have always been planning to do so from the start (though only with a motion for leave or permission of the court). It’s quite possible that Tushnet’s brief prompted the filing of more amicus briefs in this lawsuit than otherwise would have been filed, given how infrequent they are at the district court level. No amicus briefs have been filed in any other AI copyright case other than Concord Music’s motion for preliminary injunction, which was denied. Anthropic filed a motion for summary judgment on fair use (the exact same issue as Meta’s motion presents), for example. No amicus briefs were filed there.
The bigger question now is whether this amicus strategy becomes the norm for the other lawsuits. We’d expect it would for all 12 lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft now before Judge Stein as the MDL court.
EXCERPT FROM ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS AMICUS BRIEF
DOWNLOAD ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS AMICUS BRIEF
DOWNLOAD COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE AMICUS BRIEF
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