2026-09-30 — Third Circuit’s unsealed opinion rejects Ross’s fair-use defense

• The Third Circuit’s unsealed opinion says Ross Intelligence’s use of Westlaw headnotes to build a competing legal search engine was not transformative, so it was not fair use A unanimous panel opinion by Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves, filed under seal Tuesday and unsealed Wednesday, calls it “no more than an ordinary copyright case”; the court stressed that Ross’s engine was not generative AI and said in a footnote that concerns the Justice Department raised in its copyright suit against OpenAI “do not apply here.” (Reuters, via Stockopedia)

2026-09-29 — Third Circuit upholds Thomson Reuters over Ross on AI-training fair use

• The Third Circuit affirmed Thomson Reuters’s win against Ross Intelligence, the first federal appeals-court ruling on fair use in AI training A three-judge panel upheld Judge Bibas’s February 2025 finding that Ross infringed Westlaw headnotes and could not claim fair use for training a competing legal search tool on them; the court issued a one-word judgment, “AFFIRMED”, and the 32-page precedential opinion by Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves is under seal pending redactions, and the case involved a non-generative AI tool, so generative-AI fair use is still undecided. (Copyright Lately, Music Business Worldwide)
• Google is paying about 100 digital publishers for content used in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini, with payments from under $1,000 over several months to more than $1 million a year, The Information reported The pilot launched less than a year ago, some publishers say they cannot tell how payments are calculated, and some larger publishers are declining to join to press Google to pay more while the European Commission’s antitrust probe into AI Overviews continues. (The Decoder)

2026-09-22 — Anthropic and OpenAI ask Australia to relax its AI-training copyright ban

• Anthropic and OpenAI filed submissions to an Australian parliamentary inquiry urging the government to relax its ban on using the country’s copyrighted creative content to train AI models, Reuters reported from Sydney on 09-22. Anthropic’s submission said it “accepts that broad exceptions from copyright… have not received widespread support and have been ruled out by the government,” but proposed a “narrow form of conditional approval” instead, saying it would consider conditions requiring investment in or support for Australian creators; OpenAI called for “a balanced copyright framework that allows models to learn from publicly available information” while giving rightsholders ways to collaborate. Both companies tied the ask to infrastructure they’re already building there — OpenAI has an offtake agreement with data-centre developer NextDC for a planned Sydney facility, and Anthropic was named the prior week as a partner on a Queensland data centre. Australia’s Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence is due to report in November. (Reuters, via SRN News wire mirror, Reuters, original)

2026-09-18 — Sony and UMG file a new “model laundering” suit against Suno over v6

• Sony Music and Universal Music Group filed a new 45-page copyright complaint against Suno on September 18, 2026, alleging its licensed v6 model still infringes because it was distilled from earlier “teacher” models trained on unlicensed music — a “model laundering” theory covering 60,202 recordings The complaint argues “training a ’new’ model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it… V6 is not a fresh start; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree.” Suno told The Verge v6 was “trained from the ground up” on licensed data, user “creations,” “preference signals,” and the team’s “accumulated learnings,” but did not specify whether that included uploaded audio or outputs derived from it. Sony and UMG are the two major labels that did not sign licensing deals with Suno (Warner Chappell settled separately). The suit is separate from the Round Hill Music cases against Anthropic and Suno. (The Verge)

2026-09-17 — News Plaintiffs’ unsealed public summary-judgment brief quotes Microsoft’s own applied-science director calling AI training “the largest theft of labor in human history,” plus a sworn Nadella admission of substitution

• The News Plaintiffs (New York Times, Daily News, Center for Investigative Reporting, Intercept, Ziff Davis) filed the public, redacted version of their Combined Summary Judgment Brief in the same MDL this thread already tracks (Doc. 1977-1, filed 2026-09-17, 92 pages) — read directly from the docket PDF, not from coverage — and it quotes internal Microsoft and OpenAI admissions that go well beyond the fair-use framing either company has used publicly. The brief’s opening line: “This case is about, as Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science put it, ‘an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions’… perhaps the ’largest theft of labor in human history.’” That Microsoft executive is named later in the same brief as Dr. Brent Hecht, in an internal document he wrote “soon after this lawsuit was filed” (the underlying NYT suit predates this MDL). A separate Microsoft internal document, quoted verbatim, states: “Our AI content strategy has started a ‘doom loop’ that will hurt the performance of our models and the entire web at the same time: It is highly unusual that an end-product threatens the economic foundations of its essential suppliers, but that is the situation we have created for our LLM business.” The brief cites Microsoft’s own data showing Copilot’s “answer engine” cut click-through rates 83–93% for NYT/Daily News domains and 51–94% for Ziff Davis domains, versus traditional Bing search.
• CEO-level admissions under oath are also in the brief: Satya Nadella agreed under oath that conversing with chatbots “has substituted… giving you the information right there on the website on the AI platform versus needing to go to the underlying source.” OpenAI’s Head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, wrote that the products are “largely substitutive, period” and “will get more and more substitutive as they get better”; Greg Brockman wrote that the models are “particularly good at predicting text of news articles” and “excellent at news.” The brief also describes OpenAI building a “Bloom filter” that suppressed model output only of content belonging to entities that had sued it — not a general anti-infringement measure — which Hecht is quoted calling an “accidental cover up” that would leave “people who have a right over the content [with] less visibility into what was used for training.” This filing is the public unsealing of exhibits behind the summary-judgment motions this thread already logged for 2026-09-04; it does not resolve the case, but it puts internal admissions on the public docket that materially undercut the fair-use defense both companies have argued. (CourtListener docket, 1:25-md-03143, Doc. 1977-1; TechCrunch)
• San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn overruled most of Anthropic’s motion to dismiss Reddit’s data-scraping lawsuit, in an order dated 09-17 and filed 09-18 — letting three of Reddit’s five claims proceed (breach of contract, interference with contract, and violation of California’s unfair-competition law), while dismissing two (unjust enrichment, trespass to chattels) as too vague, with leave for Reddit to refile by October 16. Kahn rejected Anthropic’s argument that Reddit’s user agreement was an unenforceable “browsewrap” contract, pointing to Reddit’s allegation that Anthropic kept scraping the site more than 100,000 times even after Reddit’s CEO publicly called out the behavior. Reddit’s suit — filed June 2025, alleging Anthropic used automated bots to scrape the platform and trained Claude on users’ personal data without consent — pleads contract and business-tort claims, not copyright infringement, so this is adjacent to rather than part of this thread’s copyright-litigation core; filed here for completeness of Anthropic’s training-data legal exposure, the same basis the 08-28 Pentagon ruling was logged on. (Yahoo News/Mashable)

2026-09-16 — Judge Stein stays a related MDL case pending the summary-judgment fight, and clears a backlog of now-moot discovery motions as the litigation shifts fully into SJ posture

• Judge Sidney Stein ordered case 1:26-cv-06966 stayed “pending resolution of the summary judgment motions in the other active cases in this multidistrict litigation” (order dated 2026-09-16, following a 2026-09-15 order to show cause and the plaintiffs’ 2026-09-11 response arguing against a stay) — confirmed by reading the docket directly. The same week, a separate order (2026-09-16) denied as moot roughly two dozen discovery motions across four of the MDL’s underlying cases (23-CV-8292, 23-CV-10211, 23-CV-11195, 24-CV-3285) and granted a batch of sealing motions, administrative cleanup consistent with the litigation having moved past discovery and into the summary-judgment phase this thread has tracked since 2026-09-04. The stayed case’s identity was not established with confidence from the docket text alone (it is not the Seattle Times/Newsday suit, which carries a different docket number, 1:2026cv07644) — flagged rather than guessed. (CourtListener docket, 1:25-md-03143)

2026-09-04 — OpenAI and Microsoft move for summary judgment against news publishers and authors in the consolidated copyright MDL, and the New York Times cross-moves the same day

• Microsoft and OpenAI filed a coordinated set of summary-judgment declarations and Rule 56.1 statements on 2026-09-04 asking Judge Sidney Stein to rule outright in their favor against the News Plaintiffs, the Books/Authors Plaintiffs, and the Consolidated Class Plaintiffs in the consolidated AI-training copyright litigation, and the New York Times filed its own sealed cross-motion for summary judgment the same day. The docket for In re: OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, MDL No. 1:25-md-03143 (S.D.N.Y., Judge Sidney H. Stein), shows more than a dozen entries dated 2026-09-04 alone: Microsoft’s declarations of Annette Hurst and John D. Lafferty and expert Catherine Tucker in support of its motion for summary judgment on the News Plaintiffs’ consolidated claims (Doc. 1473) and the Books Plaintiffs’ consolidated claims (Doc. 777); OpenAI’s declarations of Robert Van Nest, Gregory K. Leonard, and Barbara Frederiksen-Cross in support of its own motion for summary judgment on the Consolidated Class Plaintiffs’ claims (Doc. 1715); the New York Times’s own sealed motion for summary judgment (Doc. 1728) and combined Rule 56.1 statement (Doc. 1730); and letter motions from both the Times and OpenAI’s counsel asking Judge Stein for oral argument (Docs. 1734, 1736). This is the same MDL this map has tracked since the DOJ filed a statement of interest backing OpenAI and Microsoft’s fair-use defense on 2026-09-01 — this entry is the next concrete step: dispositive cross-motions are now fully briefed and both sides are asking the court to decide the copyright question without a trial, rather than merely arguing a policy brief.

• No hearing date has been set on either side’s request for oral argument, leaving the timing of a dispositive ruling open. Both the New York Times and OpenAI’s counsel filed letter motions asking Judge Stein to hear argument (Docs. 1734, 1736); both are pending with no date on the docket. The entries above are drawn directly from the PACER/CourtListener docket report rather than from coverage — the story surfaced through paywalled MLex headlines that could not be read, so the docket is the only source standing behind this. (CourtListener docket, 1:25-md-03143)

• The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday, alleging the companies scraped their journalism — including paywalled content — into training data for ChatGPT, Copilot and Bing’s AI features without permission or compensation. The complaint echoes the New York Times’ 2023 suit against the same defendants and seeks destruction of any copies and training datasets/models incorporating the papers’ work, not just damages. Seattle Times CEO Alan Fisco told employees “we feel strongly that we must defend our content… from being used without our consent or compensation”; OpenAI said its models are trained on public data under fair use without commenting on the suit specifically, and Microsoft said it was “surprised” but open to discussing “solutions.” The filing lands three days after the DOJ’s fair-use statement of interest and one day after OpenAI and Microsoft moved for summary judgment against the existing News Plaintiffs in the consolidated MDL; whether the new suit is folded into MDL 1:25-md-03143 or proceeds as a standalone SDNY action is not yet shown on the docket. (Cyprus Mail, AP-fed)

2026-09-02 — The coordinated Anthropic music-copyright docket moves into phased discovery, with Amodei and Mann named personally there too

• The “Concord II” music-copyright case against Anthropic (5:26-cv-00880, N.D. Cal., Judge Eumi K. Lee) held a status conference on 2026-09-02 at which “the Court adopted its tentative ruling regarding phased discovery” and ordered the parties to meet and confer and file a proposed coordination/case-management order by 2026-09-23, plus meet-and-confer specifically on book-scanning discovery. It is not a ruling on the motion to dismiss, but it is the first sign the case has moved past pleadings into active discovery management. The party list also shows that Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann are named personally on this docket alongside Round Hill Music, BMG Rights Management and Universal Music entities — so the personal-liability theory that distinguished the Sony/Warner Chappell suit filed 08-28 is not unique to that case; a 09-03 stipulation (Doc. 118) extended Mann’s own deadline to amend his answer, and a 09-04 order (Doc. 119) granted it. Read from the docket directly; no news coverage of the status conference was found. (CourtListener docket, 5:26-cv-00880)

2026-09-01 — Music publishers file to keep the $3bn Concord II copyright suit alive against Anthropic’s motion to dismiss

• Concord Music Group and fellow publishers filed an opposition brief on 2026-09-01 urging the N.D. Cal. court not to dismiss their roughly $3 billion “Concord II” suit against Anthropic, arguing Anthropic’s dismissal arguments are “thin” and mischaracterize the law. This is the exact “Concord II dismissal ruling” this thread has watched since it opened (2026-08-06, when Anthropic first sought partial dismissal) — the case covers 20,000+ songs and alleges Anthropic torrented lyrics from pirate “shadow” libraries, filed originally in January 2026 as the second of two Concord-linked suits (Concord I is the earlier 2024 action, 5:24-cv-03811). Sourced to a Law360 headline/lede (paywalled beyond that) plus a Music Business Worldwide report on the same underlying filing wave; the case’s own docket number for “Concord II” specifically (likely 5:26-cv-00880, distinct from 2024’s 5:24-cv-03811) was not independently confirmed against CourtListener — its docket page 403’d on every direct fetch attempt this sweep made. Treat as a lead to confirm against the primary docket before building further on it. (Law360, Music Business Worldwide)

2026-08-30 — Anthropic issues its first public statement on the Sony/Warner Chappell suit

• Anthropic broke its silence on the Sony Music Publishing/Warner Chappell copyright suit, saying it will fight the case rather than settle. “We disagree with the publishers’ claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court,” a spokesperson told the South China Morning Post, published 2026-08-30 21:44 ET (updated 22:13 ET) — correcting the record’s prior note that Anthropic “did not immediately comment” when the suit was filed late 08-28. No case/docket number has surfaced anywhere yet; CourtListener’s public search still returns only the older Concord dockets, and a direct API query could not be run without authentication. (South China Morning Post)

2026-08-28 — Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic and two of its founders personally, in a filing this map first saw only as a headline

• Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and a group of affiliated publishers sued Anthropic late on Friday night, 08-28, in the Northern District of California — and named CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann personally as defendants alongside the company. That is a materially different posture from Round Hill’s solo filing and the Concord II action, both of which named only the company. The 48-page complaint alleges Anthropic “knowingly obtained works from pirate libraries; participated in their further distribution through BitTorrent; scraped licensed lyrics websites,” and “stripped away copyright-management and attribution information,” across “tens of thousands” of compositions — broader than any prior music-industry claim against the company, BMG’s 493-work suit included — and leans on the discovery record from the settled Bartz book case (the LibGen and PiLiMi downloads, some of which carried the publishers’ sheet music and lyrics). Four causes of action: direct infringement via torrenting, contributory infringement against the two named executives, a broader direct-infringement claim over acquisition and outputs, and DMCA §1202 removal of copyright-management information. Damages are statutory — “hundreds of thousands of dollars per infringed work” — which does not require proving loss. Anthropic did not immediately comment. ⚠️ Resolved 2026-09-02: the case number, unlocated when this entry was written, is Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC v. Anthropic PBC, No. 5:26-cv-09217 (N.D. Cal., filed 2026-08-28) (CourtListener docket). Docket entries stop at the 08-28 filing — complaint plus corporate-disclosure statements from the Sony and Warner plaintiff groups — with no motion activity yet. (Axios, Yahoo Finance, Reuters-fed, complaint excerpts via a legal tracker)
• 💡 This answers the structural question the morning pass could only pose. This thread had tracked one action at a time — Concord II, the Bartz settlement, Round Hill’s $1bn filing. Two majors filing together, and reaching past the company to its founders, reads as the industry adopting Round Hill’s refuse-to-settle posture rather than one publisher acting alone; the personal-liability theory is the genuinely new exposure, not the second plaintiff.
• ✎ Sourcing path, recorded rather than hidden: the 08-29 morning pass logged this from a Music Business Worldwide headline it could not open and dated it to the pickup; the 15:10 ET pass confirmed it across Axios, Reuters-fed coverage and a tracker quoting the complaint, and re-dated it to the filing.

2026-08-27 — Anthropic and Suno each move to keep the Round Hill cases apart

• Both defendants in Round Hill Music’s $1bn copyright actions are reported to be resisting having their cases heard together. ⚠️ Headline-level only — the article body returned 403 on every direct and proxied fetch, so the procedural mechanism, court and reasoning are not stated here. Why it is filed anyway: if Anthropic is arguing separation, that is a defence-posture signal worth dating — it would want its text-training fair-use arguments kept clear of Suno’s music-generation exposure, which is exactly the distinction this thread’s Bartz and Concord II precedent-tracking turns on. Treated as a lead to confirm, not a finding. (Digital Music News, headline indexed 2026-08-27 21:54 ET)

• Separately, and not a copyright development: a federal judge permanently barred the Pentagon from designating Anthropic a national-security supply-chain risk, finding the designation was retaliation for the company’s criticism of the administration. Filed here only for completeness of Anthropic’s litigation-exposure picture — it does not bear on the copyright claims — because a thread tracking one company’s legal risk should not be silently missing the case that company actually won this week. Substance sits on Frontier Gatekeeping. (Axios)

2026-08-17 — A new plaintiff, and a $1bn claim over music

• Music publisher Round Hill Music filed $1 billion copyright-infringement suits against Anthropic and, separately, Suno, alleging roughly 500 songs were used without authorisation in training, and has said it intends to pursue jury trials rather than settle. This is a new litigant and a new exposure line, distinct from the $1.5bn Bartz author-class settlement approved in July — and the stated refusal to settle is the part that matters, since the author class resolved by settlement. ⚠️ Corroborated across Reuters, THR, Billboard and Variety on the same date, but every one was paywalled or blocked to direct fetch, so this rests on consistent cross-outlet dating rather than a primary read. Caught by the 08-27 cold rotation.

2026-08-06 — Opened

• Anthropic’s copyright/training-data legal exposure surfaced from two directions the same day. Anthropic sought partial dismissal in the “Concord II” music-publishers’ copyright suit, the same day Euronews published “Project Panama” — an investigation describing how Anthropic physically shredded scanned books to train Claude. No thread on this map previously tracked Anthropic’s copyright litigation at all; two independent outlets converging on the same angle same-day was the signal this was a real emerging story, not noise. (Digital Music News, Euronews — Project Panama)

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