NYT asked a court on Thursday to let it amend its copyright complaint against Microsoft and OpenAI. The request aims to strengthen a contributory infringement claim after The Supreme Court changed the legal standard, and the filing could narrow the fight over whether AI training on copyrighted works crossed the line.
Graham James, a spokesperson for, said: "Today, we asked the court for permission to file an amended complaint that further strengthens our case, clarifying our claim of contributory infringement against Microsoft based on new law and new evidence uncovered during discovery." He also said the Times was acting to keep its core claims focused while pressing a theory that Microsoft helped make the alleged copying possible.
The Times and Microsoft
The Times said the amendment would clarify its contributory infringement claim against Microsoft. In the same filing, it agreed to voluntarily dismiss two claims of contributory copyright infringement and trademark dilution against all defendants, a move that trims the case while leaving its central copyright theory in place.
The newspaper also said Microsoft and OpenAI stole millions of The Times’s copyrighted works to compete with its products and illegally enrich themselves. Its broader lawsuit, first filed in 2023, alleges that ChatGPT was trained on The Times’s articles, produced outputs that copied articles verbatim, and generated summaries that undercut subscription value and affiliate-link commissions.
The Supreme Court standard
The legal shift comes from a Supreme Court ruling that sided with Cox Communications in a case where Sony tried and failed to argue that Cox was contributing to music piracy as an internet service provider. The ruling set a new standard for contributory infringement: plaintiffs now have to prove that a party intentionally acted to induce illegal conduct. That makes the wording of the amended complaint more than housekeeping; it is an effort to align the case with a stricter test.
The Times said the updated complaint would specify that the supercomputer at the center of its claim was tailor-made to help OpenAI infringe and was built for the explicit purpose of training AI on copyrighted works without permission. It also alleged that its articles were more heavily weighted by this system, a detail aimed at tying the alleged copying to deliberate design rather than accidental use. For readers tracking the case, the practical question is whether that theory survives the new standard without forcing a broader reset of the lawsuit.
Microsoft's response
Microsoft framed the filing as "a last-ditch effort by the plaintiff to save its claim from unfavorable precedent set in other recent rulings." That response signals the dispute is now over more than the facts of training and output; it is also about whether the Times can fit those facts into the Supreme Court’s updated rule for inducement. The court has not yet ruled on the motion, so the amended complaint is only a request, not a change in the case itself.
James said the Times believed neither Microsoft nor OpenAI would be prejudiced by allowing the amendment and said the schedule would not be set back because the paper does not seek additional discovery for the revised claims. The next move belongs to the court, and its answer will determine whether the Times argues this case under its original pleading or under a tighter theory built around the new standard.
