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November 3, 2025

Top Noteworthy Copyright Stories from October 2025 

by Rachel Kim

In October, there was yet another landmark settlement in a major AI copyright case, and the filing of multiple new copyright infringement cases against AI companies—bringing the total number of copyright cases filed to 56. Here is a quick snapshot of the top copyright news stories from October 2025.

UMG and Udio Settle Lawsuit and Enter Licensing Agreement

On October 29, Universal Music Group (UMG) announced that it settled its AI copyright infringement lawsuit against Udio. In addition to the compensatory legal settlement, the parties entered into license agreements for UMG’s recorded music and publishing catalogues. According to the announcement, the two parties will work on launching a new subscription service in 2026 for a generative AI technology trained on fully authorized and licensed music. The license is reportedly structured on artists’ opt-in. While it is expected that other plaintiffs involved in the suit against Udio may follow suit, nothing has been confirmed. On October 30, Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid released a statement commending Universal Music Group (UMG) on its agreement with Udio to settle its AI copyright suit and work with the AI company to jointly launch a new, responsibly trained gen AI music service.

  • Authors File Class Action AI Lawsuit Against Apple: On October 9, neuroscientists Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik brought a class action lawsuit against Apple over the unauthorized use of plaintiffs’ literary works to train Apple’s suite of Apple Intelligence AI models. The plaintiffs allege that Apple used the Applebot web-crawling software to indiscriminately scrape materials from the internet to use as training data, and trained models on unauthorized copies of eBooks sold to Apple Book users. The complaint contains only one claim of direct copyright infringement.
  • Authors File Class Action AI Lawsuit Against Salesforce: On October 15, authors E. Molly Tanzer and Jennifer Gilmore filed a class action lawsuit against Salesforce for using their books to train Salesforce’s XGen series of large language models (LLMs). The plaintiffs allege that the training datasets used to develop the XGen LLM included “Red Pajama” and “The Pile,” which include pirated copies of books sourced from notorious pirate websites including Library Genesis, Z-Library, Sci-Hub, and Anna’s Archive. The complaint contains one claim of direct copyright infringement. 
  • Independent Musicians File AI Class Action Lawsuit Against Udio and Suno: On October 15, a group of musicians including David Woulard, Stan Burjek, James Burjek, Berk Ergoz, Hamza Jilani, Maatkara Wilson, Arjun Singh, Magnus Fiennes and Michael Mell, filed a class action lawsuit against Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio) over the unlicensed use of plaintiffs’ sound recordings and musical works to train the Udio AI model. The plaintiffs claim that Udio scraped lyrics websites and also engaged in stream ripping songs from YouTube, and state that Udio’s unlicensed uses have resulted in loss in licensing revenues and commissions for plaintiffs. The lawsuit also reportedly includes privacy and right of publicity claims, including claims that Udio is liable for violating the Illinois Right of Publicity Act. On October 16, the same group of plaintiffs filed a similar class action lawsuit against Suno.
  • Author Files AI Class Action Lawsuit Against Apple: On October 22, author Tasha Alexander brought a class action lawsuit against Apple and senior executives at the company over the unlicensed use of copyrighted books to train its OpenELM model used in the companies’ suite of Apple Intelligence tools. Plaintiff alleges that Apple scraped the internet and downloaded pirated copies of works, using training datasets like RedPajama, C4 and PILE to develop the OpenELM model. These datasets are well known to have sourced copies of books from pirate websites including Library Genesis, Z-Library, and Bibliotek. The complaint includes one claim of direct copyright infringement.
  • Reddit Launches AI Copyright Lawsuit Against Perplexity: On October 22, Reddit filed a complaint against Perplexity, a Lithuanian data scraper, a former Russian botnet, and a Texas company that advertises services to circumvent digital control measures, alleging that the defendants are liable for evading Reddit’s bot blocking measures and Google’s controls and for scraping Reddit content directly from Google’s search engine results. Reddit provided an example noting that during a two-week period in July 2025, various defendants bypassed security restrictions and technological control measures (TPMs) to access three billion search engine results containing text, URLs, images, and videos shared on Reddit. Reddit further alleged that Perplexity hired one or more of the other defendants to circumvent TPMs to access and scrape Reddit content in bulk. The complaint includes three claims related to the circumvention of TPMs and the trafficking of technology, product, service or devices used to circumvent TPMs in addition to other state-law related claims.

Sony and Others File Briefs in SCOTUS Case; Oral Arguments Scheduled

On October 15, respondent record labels filed their brief in the Sony v. Cox case that is currently pending before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). The record labels’ brief argues that Cox is liable for contributory infringement because it continued to provide internet service for known repeat infringers and that Cox’s contributory infringement was willful because the ISP knew that its continued provision of internet services would continue to facilitate infringement for such users. On October 17, the Court scheduled oral arguments in the case for December 1, 2025. On October 22, the Copyright Alliance filed an amicus brief in support of the record labels, as did the Motion Picture Association, National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the Authors Guild, Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America, Songwriters Guild of America, Novelists, Inc., Dramatists Guild of America, Society of Composers and Lyricists, National Music Publishers’ Association, Recording Industry Association of America, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Songwriters of North America, SoundExchange, American Association of Independent Music, American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Association of Amicus Counsel, Association of American Publishers, News/Media Alliance, former Members of Congress and Registers and General Counsels of the U.S. Copyright Office, Professor Bruce Boyden, and a group of IP law scholars.

On October 27, the Copyright Alliance submitted comments in response to the request for information (RFI) published by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) requesting input to identify existing Federal statutes, regulations, agency rules, guidance, forms, and administrative processes that unnecessarily hinder the development, deployment, and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies within the United States. The comments explain that copyright should not be viewed as a barrier to AI development, but rather the underlying foundation that ensures trustworthy and beneficial generative AI development. The comments recommend that any policies adopted by the Administration: (i) are developed and implemented with a respect for and recognition of longstanding copyright laws and policies that make America the global leader in the creative and digital industries and in AI, and (ii) do not hinder the development, deployment, and adoption of generative AI technologies within the United States by disrupting the existing and growing copyright licensing market for AI-related uses.

On October 26, the Albanese Government announced a new copyright consultation. During the announcement, the Government rejected the idea of adding an AI exception to Australian copyright law, saying that it “stands behind Australia’s creative industry” by “ruling out a Text and Data Mining Exception.” The consultation will address possible updates to Australia’s copyright laws in three priority areas: (1) encouraging fair, legal venues for using copyright material in AI, including exploring various licensing solutions; (2) clarifying application of copyright law to AI-generated output; and (3) discussing the possible establishment of a new small claims forum to address lower-value copyright infringement matters.

DOJ Requests SCOTUS to Uphold the White House’s Dismissal of USCO Register Perlmutter

On October 27, the U.S. Solicitor General filed an application to stay the interlocutory Injunction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Register Shira Perlmutter’s case against the U.S. Government for wrongful termination. The Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit had reinstated Perlmutter as Register on September 10 and denied the defendants’ petition for rehearing en banc on October 1. Perlmutter’s response is due November 10. More about this case is available on the SCOTUS docket.

Register of Copyrights Files Opposition to Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment

On October 6, Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter filed an opposition to defendants’ cross-motion for summary judgment and reply in support of her motion for summary judgment in her ongoing case against Todd Blanche and other Administration officials in the District Court for the District of Columbia. In the opposition, Perlmutter argues that the President lacked the authority to directly remove Perlmutter as Register and lacked the authority to appoint Blanche as Librarian of Congress. Perlmutter also argues that she is entitled to injunctive relief and that reinstatement is an available remedy in wrongful-removal cases. The District Court case is proceeding after the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit reinstated Perlmutter as Register on September 10 and denied the defendants’ petition for rehearing en banc on October 1.

Court Denies Anthropic’s Motions to Dismiss Music Publishers’ Amended Claims, Rejects Publishers’ Request to Add Piracy Claims

On October 6, Judge Eumi K. Lee for the Northern District of California in the Concord v. Anthropic AI copyright case, denied Anthropic’s motion to dismiss music publishers plaintiffs’ amended claims of contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and removal of Copyright Management Information (CMI) in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) related to the unlicensed use of plaintiffs’ song lyrics to train the Claude AI model. The court found that because Anthropic gathered data on specific Claude user prompts and their corresponding infringing outputs, this constituted actual knowledge of its users’ infringements and the publishers’ contributory infringement claim would be preserved. The court also found that because plaintiffs pointed to evidence that Anthropic is paid every time a user submits a request for publishers’ song lyrics and is paid again every time the Claude API generates output that copies and relies on those lyrics, plaintiffs adequately showed that Anthropic specifically benefits from infringements of plaintiffs’ works, preserving the plaintiffs’ vicarious infringement claim. Lastly, the court found that plaintiffs made a plausible claim as to their CMI removal claim, stressing that Anthropic’s preference to use the CMI removal tool, “Newspaper,” to extract more CMI over other tools lead to the plausible inference that Anthropic knowingly removed CMI to conceal its own infringement, distinguishing this case from Tremblay v. OpenAI where the CMI claim was dismissed because it was analyzed in the context of whether the CMI removal enabled end user infringement. Then, at a hearing on October 8, Judge Lee denied plaintiffs’ request to file a second amended complaint to add a new claim of copyright infringement based on Anthropic’s alleged bittorenting of files of their musical works allegedly from shadow libraries. According to reports, Judge Lee said that “[a]mendment is inappropriate because the publishers failed to diligently investigate the theory of liability based on Anthropic’s downloading of works.”

RIAA, MPA, AAP, and ESA Submit Comments to USTR’s 2025 Notorious Market Review

By the October 1 deadline, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association (MPA), Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Entertainment Software Association (ESA) submitted comments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) 2025 Notorious Market Review, identifying some of the most egregious physical and digital markets and services that engage in or facilitate copyright piracy. For the Notorious Market Review, rightsholders identified numerous stream-ripping and piracy websites and marketplaces, a full list of which can be found in the submissions.  

On October 9, Dr. Stephen Thaler filed a cert petition with the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) appealing the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit’s opinion affirming the district court’s decision denying Thaler’s copyright registration. The decision stated that non-humans cannot be the recognized author of a copyrighted work because the Copyright Act requires an eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being. The question presented in Thaler’s cert petition is: “Whether works outputted by an AI system without a direct, traditional authorial contribution by a natural person can be copyrighted.” 

Judge Rejects OpenAI’s Motion to Strike Piracy and Infringing Output Claims in Multidistrict Litigation

On October 27, Judge Stein issued an opinion and order denying OpenAI’s and Microsoft’s motion to strike claims related to OpenAI’s impermissible download and reproduction of plaintiffs’ books in the consolidated class action case in the Southern District of New York known as the “Multidistrict Litigation (MDL).” OpenAI and Microsoft had argued that the consolidated complaint adds new claims because it does not link its factual allegations regarding OpenAI downloading plaintiffs’ books to train its LLMs, while the prior class complaints allegedly uniformly connected allegations about downloading the books to OpenAI’s use of them to train its LLMs. Rejecting that theory, Judge Stein explained that the prior class complaints asserted a cause of action for copyright infringement and alleged that OpenAI impermissibly downloaded and reproduced plaintiffs’ books. Judge Stein further noted, “the fact that many of the allegations in the prior class complaints suggested that the ultimate purpose of the reproduction was to train OpenAI’s LLMs is not dispositive.” Judge Stein’s order is significant because even the court finds that OpenAI’s use of plaintiffs’ works for training qualifies as fair use, it could still be liable for massive statutory damages (similar to those that led to the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement) based on its downloading of pirated copies of works from known shadow libraries. The same day Judge Stein issued the opinion and order on the downloading of pirated works, the court issued another opinion and order rejecting the defendants’ motion to strike infringement claims based on allegedly infringing ChatGPT outputs. The court has scheduled a confidential settlement conference for October 31.

Christopher A. Meyer Memorial Lecture: On November 12 from 6-8 p.m. ET, the Copyright Society, the Law Office of Michael R. Klipper, PLLC, and the George Washington Law School will host the 2025 Annual Christopher A. Meyer Memorial Lecture. This year’s lecture is titled The Copyright Act Never Goes Out of Fashion, given by David Nimmer. More information is available on the registration page.

GIPC Digital Piracy Symposium: On November 18 from 2-5 p.m. ET, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) will host a Digital Piracy Symposium that will encompass “a series of engaging conversations exploring best practices, challenges, and the criminal nexus in combating digital IP theft across various industries.” During the event, under the theme of Cross-Industry Tactics to Combat IP Theft, GIPC will unveil its 2025 Digital Piracy Study, an expanded follow-up to the 2019 report, Impacts of Digital Video Piracy on the U.S. Economy. Following the symposium, attendees are invited to join the Chamber for the 2025 IP Champions Reception, which will celebrate leaders across the intellectual property innovation and protection arena. More information is available on the registration page.

CCC Webinar on ‘Navigating Copyright in a Complex Global Landscape’: On November 19 at 10 a.m. ET, the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) will host a webinar titled Navigating Copyright in a Complex Global Landscape. The event will enable attendees to better understand the complexities involved for companies and organizations that do business globally, including the worldwide complexities of copyright, addressing common compliance challenges, the intersections of AI and copyright, and strategies and solutions for success. More information is available on the registration page.

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