• by Ray Schultz , January 26, 2025

OpenAI, which has been sued by numerous publishers in the U.S., is facing litigation in a different venue: it is facing suit by Indian book publishers for alleged copyright infringement. 

The New Delhi-based Federation of Indian Publishers has filed a case with the Delhi High Court, and is seeking to join a lawsuit initiated by the Indian news agency ANI, Reuters reports. 

The new suit concerns OpenAI’s book summaries.  

"Our ask from the court is that they should stop (OpenAI from) accessing our copyright content," Pranav Gupta, the federation's general secretary, told Reuters.

Gupta added: "In case they don't want to do licensing with us, they should delete datasets used in AI training and explain how we will be compensated. This impacts creativity."

OpenAI claims that an order to delete training data would violate it U.S. legal obligations, and that Indian judges have no right to hear the case because its servers are located abroad, Reuters writes. Reuters owns a 26% stake in ANI but does not have operational control.  

Elsewhere, OpenAI has been sued by the New York Times, by the New York Daily News and seven other newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital, and by the Center for Investigative Reporting. And it faces a lawsuit filed by five Canadian news publishers for allegedly using their content to train its models.

But it has also signed licensing deals with numerous publishers, including Conde Nast, Dotdash Meredith, News Corp., Financial Times and Axel Springer.