The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought OpenAI’s response to an appeal filed by news agency Asian News International (ANI) challenging a single-judge order that refused to grant it interim relief in its copyright infringement suit against the company that owns ChatGPT.
A Division Bench of Justices Avneesh Jhingan and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora issued notice to OpenAI and listed the matter for further hearing on December 5.
ANI is the first Indian media organisation to sue OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement. In its suit filed in 2024, ANI alleged that OpenAI was unauthorisedly using its copyrighted content to train and operate ChatGPT.
As interim relief, ANI had sought an injunction restraining OpenAI from storing, publishing, reproducing or otherwise using its copyrighted content. In July this year, however, Justice Amit Bansal declined to grant the interim injunction, holding that doing so would be contrary to public interest.
The single judge observed that OpenAI’s storage of news material published by ANI for training ChatGPT did not, prima facie, appear to constitute copyright infringement. The Court further held that granting an interim injunction could cause irreparable injury not only to OpenAI but also to the public interest.
ANI subsequently challenged the order before the Division Bench.
The news agency has contended that merely because its content is publicly accessible, OpenAI does not acquire the right to commercially exploit it or create copies of the material for storage.
Appearing for ANI, advocate Sidhant Kumar submitted that OpenAI had earlier undertaken, as an interim arrangement, not to scrape content from ANI’s website. Counsel Kumar submitted that between September 11, 2024, and the issuance of the contested order, OpenAI had voluntarily committed to abstain from scraping or downloading news content from ANI’s website.
The Division Bench, however, indicated that it was not inclined to issue any directions concerning the arrangement at this stage without first hearing OpenAI’s response.
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the Broadband India Forum as an intervenor, urged the Division Bench to allow the forum to present its arguments. He emphasized that the single judge had previously heard them and stressed that the outcome of the appeal carries global implications.
The Bench questioned whether the Broadband India Forum was a formally impleaded party, asking if an intervenor could join at every stage of litigation and requesting legal submissions on the matter for the next hearing.
Senior Advocate Arvind Datar, also appearing for Broadband India Forum, submitted that the forum would file a formal application seeking intervention.
After issuing notice to OpenAI, the Bench listed the matter for hearing in December.
The post Delhi High Court seeks OpenAI’s stand on ANI’s appeal in Copyright infringement case appeared first on India Legal.