• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, June 29, 2025

The never-ending copyright case against OpenAI by The New York Times and several other publishers took a step forward last week when a federal court upheld an earlier ruling ordering OpenAI to not destroy documents. 

U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein supported the May 13 order by Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang in which Wang directed OpenAI to “preserve and segregate all output log data that would otherwise be deleted on a going forward basis until further order of the Court (in essence, the output log data that OpenAI has been destroying).” 

In a separate ruling last week, Wang directed the New York Times  to provide information on whether the Times “keeps or has a list or repository of corrections made since 2022, and provide that information to Microsoft by July 2, 2025.

However, Wang added, “The parties are cautioned that this ruling is NOT a finding that New York Times’s own corrections are relevant to the claim of trademark dilution.”

The judge is apparently to speed up the discovery process. Wang counseled that any such “dispositions” by the two sides would count toward the total disposition hours cap. 

In addition, Wang ordered the sides to continue and conferring on issues. 

In addition to the Times, the plaintiffs in the consolidated cases include the New York Daily News,Chicago Tribune and other Alden Global Capital titles, and the Center for Investigative Reporting. 

The plaintiffs have argued in a memo that they are hampered by “the unavailability of significant tranches" of historical data.

The case is on file with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.