U.S. Justice Department Backs OpenAI in Copyright Lawsuit by The...

U.S. Justice Department Backs OpenAI in Copyright Lawsuit by The New York Times

On September 2, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the federal court in Manhattan supporting OpenAI and Microsoft in The New York Times lawsuit, asserting that training large language models on copyrighted texts constitutes fair use.

Compiled by Sergey KostenchukPublished 2026-09-02Updated 2026-09-18

2026-09-02 Safety OpenAI

🛡 U.S. Justice Department Sides with OpenAI in The New York Times Lawsuit

On September 2, 2026, the U.S. Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the Manhattan court in The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. The DOJ's position: training LLMs on copyrighted texts is fair use. NYT responded: the administration is "siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies."

🌍 For the first time, federal authorities have intervened in a central copyright case of the generative AI era, publicly supporting fair use for LLM training. However, a statement of interest is not a precedent: the court may reject it.

👤 The court's decision will determine the legal basis for ML teams: the freedom to train on others' data or mandatory licenses to publishers.

Source 1: https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-new-york-times-openai-copyright-dbb22e8e02c660ee5a8644915dec39a4 Source 2: https://nypost.com/2026/09/02/business/doj-sides-with-openai-over-ny-times-in-lawsuit-alleging-ai-copyright-infringement/

Sources