• by Ray Schultz , October 24, 2024

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas was surprised by the copyright lawsuit filed this week by Dow Jones. 

The publisher had reached out to Perplexity in June, and the company was willing to talk to them, Srinivas said during the WSJ Tech Live conference, Reuters reports. 

The case, on file with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was brought by “news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity’s brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce,” the complaint states.

Perplexity had not filed an answer with the court at deadline. In addition to the one from Dow Jones, Perplexity has received cease-and-desist letters from The New York Times and Condé Nast.

The Dow Jones lawsuit also alleges that “Perplexity has marketed itself as, among other things, a substitute purveyor of news, even though Perplexity does not employ any journalists or editors to produce original news stories.” 

The case specifies two Dow Jones publications: The Wall Street Journal and New York Post.