Law & Justice
ANI Appeals Delhi High Court Ruling Favoring OpenAI in Copyright Dispute
News agency ANI has approached a division bench of the Delhi High Court, challenging a single judge's earlier ruling that dismissed its plea seeking to stop OpenAI from using its content to train ChatGPT. The appeal, filed against the July 24 verdict, was listed before a bench comprising Justices V Kameshwar Rao and Manmeet PS Arora. However, the hearing was adjourned to September 14 as the bench did not convene.
The original ruling, delivered by Justice Amit Bansal on July 24, had rejected ANI's request for an injunction against OpenAI. In his 135-page judgment, Justice Bansal held that OpenAI's use of ANI's news content to train its large language model fell under the 'fair dealing' exception outlined in Indian copyright law. He classified the usage as 'private use' under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957, a provision that allows fair use of copyrighted material for purposes such as private study, research, criticism, review, and reporting of current events.
Justice Bansal reasoned that the data used for training was accessible only to the AI system during its learning process and was never made publicly available for viewing or downloading.
In its appeal, ANI argued that the court had not adequately weighed OpenAI's alleged admission that it scraped, stored, and commercially used the agency's content. ANI claimed this amounted to a violation of its exclusive rights under the Copyright Act, including the rights to reproduce, store, adapt, and translate its original work.