- Judges Alsup and Chhabria issued two opinions finding that Anthropic and Meta engaged in fair use in training their AI models on copyrighted books.
- But their decisions were a mixed bag and unfavorable to Anthropic and Meta for different reasons related to Anthropic’s building of a library of pirated books downloaded from shadow libraries or to Meta’s AI’s potential to cause market dilution from non-infringing AI-generated works.
Due to a change in scheduling order in the In re Mosaic LLM Litigation and Concord Music v. Anthropic, we have a new “on the clock” list for the next potential fair use decision, which will not come until 2026.
We have an updated prediction of which district court judge will have the next decision on fair use in the AI litigation.
Looking at the schedules in the other cases, it looks like Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV (formerly the Chief Judge), presiding over UMG v. Suno in the District of Massachusetts, will be the next judge to rule on whether using copyrighted works to train AI models is a fair use. Of course, this case reportedly had serious settlement negotiations but, so far, without success. If the Suno case settles, Judge Lee in the Google Gen AI case would move to the top of the order, followed by Judge Lee in Concord Music. So, it looks like Judge Saylor and Judge Lee are the two judges with the greatest chance of deciding fair use in the first half of 2026.
Here are the current schedules related to summary judgment motions:
- March 13, 2026 – UMG Recordings v. Suno SJ motions due (Judge Saylor IV)
- May 6, 2026 – In re Google Gen AI Litigation last day for hearing on SJ (Judge Lee)
- June 10, 2026 – Concord Music v. Anthropic hearing on SJ (Judge Lee)*
- July 10, 2026 – In re Mosaic LLM Litigation replies on SJ due (Judge Breyer)*
- Oct. 16, 2026 – In re ChatGPT Infringement Litigation replies on SJ due (Judge Stein)
- Nov. 4, 2026 – Andersen v. Stability AI hearing on SJ (Judge Orrick)
- Nov. 23, 2026 – Nazemian, Dubus v. NVIDIA replies due on SJ (Judge Tigar)
There appears to be no judge with the possibility of issuing a decision on fair use before the end of 2025 (other than Judge Alsup on the shadow library issue noted above).
Under the current schedules, it seems very likely that the judgment in Bartz v. Anthropic will be on appeal before the 9th Circuit even before the summary judgment motions are due in Suno. The judgment in Kadrey v. Meta may as well, although the trial or summary judgment motions for the torrenting / distribution side of the case has yet to be scheduled as the parties are navigating the final discovery. But it seems highly unlikely the 9th Circuit would even had oral argument before the judges in Suno, Mosaic, Concord Music, Google GenAI will have a chance to rule on fair use in AI training. All of this is to say that Judges Saylor, Lee, Breyer, Stein, Orrick, and Tigar may weigh in on fair use in 2026. (*There may other judges in some of the other cases, too.)
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