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Federal Judge Sides with Meta in Authors’ AI Copyright Lawsuit

By  |  June 26, 2025

A federal court in San Francisco ruled in favor of Meta Platforms on Wednesday, dismissing a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors who accused the tech giant of illegally using their books to train its artificial intelligence system, LLaMA. According to Reuters, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria found that the plaintiffs failed to present adequate evidence showing that Meta’s use of their work had caused market harm sufficient to establish copyright infringement.

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    The authors, represented by the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, filed the lawsuit in 2023, arguing that Meta relied on unauthorized, pirated versions of their books to develop its AI without obtaining proper consent or offering compensation. Their case is among several similar lawsuits filed against companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic, all of which hinge on how copyright law applies to the use of creative works in AI training.

    Judge Chhabria emphasized that while this ruling favors Meta, it should not be interpreted as a blanket approval of the company’s practices. “This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,” he clarified in his opinion. “It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one.”

    Related: Apple, Meta Face Thursday Deadline To Comply With DMA or Be Hit With Fines

    As Reuters reported, the court’s decision underlines the importance of evidence showing concrete market harm when alleging copyright violations in the AI context. Chhabria noted that under U.S. copyright law, demonstrating that the use of protected works reduces the demand for the original is a critical component of such claims.

    Despite ruling against the authors, Chhabria appeared sympathetic to broader concerns about how generative AI could disrupt creative industries. During a hearing in May—and again in his written decision—he cautioned that mass AI training on copyrighted content may “dramatically undermine the incentive for human beings to create things the old-fashioned way.”

    In contrast to this case, another federal judge in San Francisco issued a decision earlier this week involving Anthropic, concluding that the company’s AI training constituted “fair use” of copyrighted works. The divergence in rulings highlights the unsettled nature of copyright law in the age of generative AI.

    A spokesperson for Meta welcomed the decision and reiterated the importance of fair use as a foundation for innovation in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the authors’ legal team expressed disappointment, calling Meta’s actions a “historically unprecedented pirating of copyrighted works,” per Reuters.

    Source: Reuters