The Delhi High Court on Friday (July 24, 2026) refused to grant interim relief to news agency Asian News International (ANI) in its copyright infringement suit against OpenAI, holding that the news agency had failed to establish a prima facie case that ChatGPT infringed its copyright.
Justice Amit Bansal held that OpenAI’s ChatGPT use of ANI’s literary works for training the Large Language Models (LLMs) was covered by the fair dealing exception under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act.
The court also remarked, “There is no averment in the plaint nor has any material been placed on record to show that the activities of Open AI have resulted in ANI losing subscribers or suffering a loss from its news syndication business.”
“ANI itself has offered a license to Open AI for its content for a fee of USD 7.5 million vide its communication dated October 2, 2024. Therefore, the claim of ANI is quantifiable and ANI can be compensated in monetary terms, if ANI succeeds in the present case,” the court said.
ANI had, as an interim relief, sought for deletion of the “plaintiff’s (ANI) works held and stored in whatever form” by Open AI. This was contested by Open AI’s counsel noting that it would be inconsistent with the company’s obligation under the laws of United States of America to preserve such training data.
Refusing interim relief, the court observed that an injunction at this stage would cause irreparable prejudice not only to OpenAI but also to the public at large.
“AI and its applications are being used beneficially in several sectors, such as education, healthcare, financial support sector, agriculture and for providing other skill development resources...The development of LLMs and their success depends on availability of data. It would be economically unviable to develop an LLM if training of an LLM would require licenses from multiple sources,” the court said.
“Any interim injunction granted at this stage would, in my opinion, be detrimental to the growth of AI and more particularly, to the LLMs being developed in India. It would also have adverse impact on public interest, including millions of users of ChatGPT in India, many of whom would not be paid subscribers,” Justice Bansal reasoned.
The court, however, held that it had the jurisdiction to hear the ANI’s suit despite OpenAI’s contention that its servers are located outside India. It observed that ChatGPT is offered to users in India and the alleged infringement was claimed to have occurred here.
The suit, filed by ANI in November 2024, is the first copyright action by an Indian news organisation against OpenAI.
ANI alleged that OpenAI had used its copyrighted news reports without permission to train ChatGPT and that the chatbot generated responses which copied or closely summarised its reports. It also claimed that ChatGPT falsely attributed fabricated news reports and statements to ANI, harming its reputation.
ANI, on October 3, 2024, offered to grant a license to OpenAI for using the news contents for the training of the LLM. However, the U.S.-based company declined this proposal.
ANI’s counsel had, during the hearing, stated it is publicly known that OpenAI have entered into strategic partnerships and licensing arrangements with news organisations such as the Financial Times, The Associated Press, and Conde Nast that function on a similar business model as ANI.
OpenAI has denied the allegations, maintaining that ANI’s website had been excluded from future training and that ChatGPT did not unlawfully reproduce ANI’s works.
Published - July 24, 2026 03:02 pm IST