{"id":134265,"date":"2025-09-10T17:37:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T17:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/134265\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T17:37:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T17:37:17","slug":"openai-wants-lawsuit-by-canadian-news-outlets-moved-from-ontario-to-u-s-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/134265\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI wants lawsuit by Canadian news outlets moved from Ontario to U.S. – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenAI is set to argue in an Ontario court today that a copyright lawsuit filed by Canadian news publishers involving its ChatGPT<\/a> generative AI system should be heard in a U.S. courtroom instead.<\/p>\n

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A coalition of Canadian news outlets which includes The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC\/Radio-Canada is suing OpenAI for using news content to train ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

In what is the first case of its kind in Canada, they argue OpenAI is breaching copyright by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media, and then profiting from the use of that content without permission or compensation.<\/p>\n

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OpenAI is challenging the jurisdiction of the Ontario Superior Court to hear the case, arguing the company isn\u2019t located in Ontario and doesn\u2019t do business in the province. It\u2019s headquartered in San Francisco and the court documents note all of the companies\u2019 subsidiaries were \u201cincorporated or formed under the laws of Delaware.\u201d<\/p>\n

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OpenAI says in a court filing that \u201cthe alleged conduct \u2014 namely, the training of AI models<\/a> and the automated crawling of web content \u2014 occurred entirely outside Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI is arguing the Copyright Act doesn\u2019t apply to activities that occurred outside Canada and the case should be heard in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanadian copyright law does not apply to extraterritorial conduct,\u201d it says in its submission. \u201cThe fact that the Plaintiffs are located in Canada or that some of their websites are hosted on servers in Canada is immaterial to the extraterritorial conduct alleged.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In their filing, the news publishers say the case should proceed in Ontario. They argue there is a \u201creal and substantial connection to Ontario\u201d and that they deliver the \u201cvast majority\u201d of journalistic content in Ontario and Canada.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe News Media Companies are each Canadian owned or controlled, with their headquarters in Ontario,\u201d the document states.<\/p>\n

It argues the news content \u201cis property that was largely created in Ontario, is owned by companies based in Ontario, and resides in significant part in Ontario,\u201d and that much of OpenAI\u2019s \u201cscraping\u201d of that online content happened in the province.<\/p>\n

Many of the arguments in case are technical and revolve around factors like the locations of servers and whether a protocol used to disallow web crawling is a technological protection measure under the Copyright Act.<\/p>\n

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But the news publishers also argue the case involves bigger questions.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAside from being wrong in law, adopting OpenAI\u2019s arguments and defining digital jurisdiction based solely on what they say is their lack of physical presence in the jurisdiction would mean Canada giving up jurisdiction over a large part of its digital economy,\u201d their court document says.<\/p>\n

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They call that a \u201csobering prospect, particularly in the context of news media and its importance to Canadian sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI, in turn, accuses the news publishers of politicizing the case. It says their court filing \u201cimproperly invokes themes such as national sovereignty and the importance of journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese hyperbolic submissions are irrelevant to the jurisdictional issues,\u201d the company says. \u201cCopyright\u2019s territorial nature does not raise sovereignty concerns and attempts to politicize the motion through appeals to sentiment should be rejected as distractions from the legal issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The lawsuit, which was launched last year, is the first Canadian case to address the practice of using copyrighted content to train generative AI<\/a> systems.<\/p>\n

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Multiple lawsuits dealing with AI systems and copyright are underway in the United States, some dating back to 2023. While AI companies won victories in two of those cases in June, U.S. courts have not yet set a clear precedent on the wider question.<\/p>\n

OpenAI notes in its document that the \u201cthe permissibility of training AI models on copyright-protected works is an active issue before the U.S. courts.\u201d<\/p>\n

It says in a partially-redacted section of the filing that if U.S. courts were to decide such use is lawful \u2014 by, for instance, determining that it falls under the fair use doctrine \u2014 \u201cit would be problematic for this Court to reach a contrary conclusion under Canadian law.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The news publishers disagree and say there is no risk of conflicting decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe consideration under this factor is whether different courts may reach conflicting decisions in respect of the particular facts of this case, not whether courts in the U.S. and Canada may apply their respective jurisprudence to reach different conclusions on novel legal issues,\u201d says their filing.<\/p>\n

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