• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

The lawsuits filed by TheNew York Times and Chicago Tribune Co. against Perplexity last year have finally moved off square one.  

Perplexity, the AI search company, filed a motion on Friday, seeking to have several counts of the integrated complaint dismissed. Of course, they used some tired old arguments.  

For instance, the motion claims that Perplexity’s answer engine “connects large language models to the vast ocean of human knowledge and information dispersed across the internet, of which…Times and Tribune content is a minuscule part.”

Oh, sure. That’s similar to the argument Meta has made: that “news” is a minor portion of its content. 

Moreover, the motion starts by quoting the decision in the case of Feist Pubs, Inc. versus Rural Telephone. Serv. Co., circa 1991: “The most fundamental axiom of copyright law is that no author may copyright his ideas or the facts he narrates.”

That is incomplete. Yes, sheer facts—say, phone numbers—cannot be copyrighted. But that is turned on its head when significant creative effort has gone into rearranging or enhancing those facts, the Feist decision pointed out. Indeed, that is the best defense in a copyright or plagiarism suit. 

But let’s give the defendant some space here. The plaintiffs “have not plausibly alleged that Perplexity knew that its technology was being used by any users to generate specific and identifiable copies of individual works owned by Plaintiffs,” it claims.

Perplexity also argues that it has not used “any of the Times’ trademarks in any advertising materials—or any examples of any ‘hallucinations’ incorrectly attributing content to the Times or any allegedly “incomplete” content from the Times in any Perplexity output.” That will have to be argued in many depositions.  

Get ready for a long ride. 

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