• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 13, 2025

Brave Software, which operates a search engine, has sued News Corp., asking a federal judge to rule that it has not infringed on the media company’s copyrights by using its search summaries through tools related to generative AI (GAI).

Claiming its actions are covered by the fair use doctrine, Brave scraped News Corp-owned websites such as The Wall Street Journal’s and New York Post for content that it has served up in its engines.

Brave said in a complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that the company seeks a decision on the ruling that it did not breach News Corp.'s terms of service when it sold a search index of scraped articles to use for GAI engines.

It also accused News Corp of threatening to disrupt advances in GAI, alleging that chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini rely on search engine responses.

Brave Search, the company said, has less than 1% of the search market, with Google commanding nearly 90%.

It also accused News Corp of threatening to disrupt advances in generative artificial intelligence, saying chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini rely on search engine responses.

The filing explains GAI engines like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini rely on responses from search engines provided through the chatbots via APIs.

The claim also states that News Corp intends to “bully” Brave out of the search market, and that the effect of those threats, if successful, will also bully others from the search market -- impacting the search and development of GAI engines, Brave said.