OpenAI, Inc., Copyright Infringement

This docket consolidates copyright-infringement claims brought against an artificial-intelligence company and a technology-company co-defendant by a mix of individual authors, an authors' trade association, and news organizations, alleging that copyrighted books and journalism were copied to train large language models and that the resulting outputs reproduce protected expression. Centralized in the Southern District of New York in 2025, the docket carries 19 pending actions consolidating claims originally filed in multiple federal districts.

The capital picture in this docket is genuinely mixed, unlike most intellectual-property MDLs. Several of the named plaintiffs are large, well-capitalized news organizations and publishing interests capable of funding their own litigation, but the docket also includes an authors' trade association pursuing claims on behalf of individual working writers, and independent or smaller press plaintiffs, whose litigation cost exposure against a well-resourced technology-company defendant is a more realistic funding conversation.

For a funder, this is a copyright, not personal-injury, damages framework: statutory and actual damages tied to specific works and specific instances of alleged copying and output reproduction, litigated against novel questions about how fair use applies to AI training data, an unsettled area of law with limited controlling precedent. Criterica Capital's commercial litigation finance line is the applicable product for smaller author or publisher plaintiffs in this docket, with pricing that should explicitly account for the genuine legal uncertainty in how courts will resolve the fair-use question for AI training, rather than treating liability as a foregone conclusion in either direction. A structure and litigation brief on the current claim population and legal theories is also available.

Pre-settlement funding is a non-recourse purchase of a portion of the proceeds of a pending legal claim — not a loan. If the case does not result in a recovery, nothing is owed. Rates, fees, and repayment terms are disclosed in full in the funding agreement, which the applicant’s attorney reviews before signing. Availability and terms vary by state.