- On June 30, 2025, the Joseph Saveri Law Firm filed another copyright suit against AI companies, Denial v. OpenAI.
- This one, filed in the Northern District of California, was filed for non-book textual authors CATHERINE DENIAL, STEVEN SCHWARTZ, and IAN MCDOWELL, on behalf of a proposed class of non-book textual authors, one class registered works and another class unregistered works (the latter for state claims and DMCA CMI claim).
- This raises the total number of suits that the Saveri firm has brought to 10 lawsuits.
- This follows the recent decision in Kadrey v. Meta, in which Judge Chhabria granted partial summary judgment in favor of Meta and criticized the plaintiffs represented by the Saveri firm and the David Boies’ firm for failing to present sufficient evidence to raise a genuine issue of a new theory of market dilution.
- Noticeably, this complaint does not allege the new theory of market dilution, either.
- The case has been assigned to Judge Edward Chen
The complaint in Denial v. OpenAI alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft committed infringement by using the plaintiffs’ non-book textual works, downloaded from shadow libraries, including BookCorpus, LibGen1, LibGen2, or scraped from the Internet.
- Catherine Denial, A proper light before the country: the shifting politics of gender and kinship among the Dakota, Ojibwe and non-native communities of the Upper Midwest, 1825-1845.
- Steven A. Schwartz, A Comprehensive System for Item Analysis in Psychological Scale Construction, Journal of Educational Measurement 15, no. 2
- Ian McDowell, Wilmington Massacre was Confederacy’s Revenge,Yes! Weekly
Here are the 2 proposed classes:
The claims against OpenAI and Microsoft:
- Direct Copyright Infringement (Non-Book Infringement Class)
- Vicarious Infringement (Non-Book Infringement Class)
- Unfair Competition, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200 et seq.(ALL)
- Violation of the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA) Cal. Penal Code § 502 (Unregistered Class)
- CMI-Stripping: Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) U.S.C. § 1201(b)(1) (ALL)
- Conversion (Unregistered Class)
- Unjust Enrichment / Quasi-Contract (Unregistered Class)
- Breach of Contract as a Third-Party Beneficiary (Unregistered Class)
- Violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (Unregistered Class)
- Larceny/Receipt of Stolen Property, Cal. Penal Code § 496(a), (c) (Unregistered Class)
- Sherman Act – Conspiracy to Restrain Trade, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1 & 3 (ALL)
Excerpt from Complaint
Allegations related to Direct Infringement
DOWNLOAD THE COMPLAINT