Lawsuit tracker
Dow Jones v. Perplexity
Dow Jones & Co., Inc. and NYP Holdings, Inc. v. Perplexity AI, Inc., No. 1:24-cv-07984 (S.D.N.Y.)
| Plaintiffs | Dow Jones (publisher of The Wall Street Journal) and NYP Holdings (New York Post), both News Corp companies |
|---|---|
| Defendants | Perplexity AI |
| Court | U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Judge Katherine Polk Failla) |
| Filed | 2024-10-21 |
| Status | Active |
| Content type | journalism |
| Last updated | 2026-07-21 |
The claims
Copyright infringement over Perplexity’s retrieval-augmented answer engine — both the copying of articles into its index and outputs that reproduce or closely paraphrase them — plus trademark dilution and false-designation claims over answers, including hallucinated content, presented under the papers’ names. The publishers seek up to $150,000 per infringed work.
What has happened
News Corp’s flagship papers sued Perplexity over its answer engine, alleging it copies their articles wholesale into a retrieval index and serves outputs that substitute for reading the originals, diverting traffic and revenue. The complaint pairs copyright claims with trademark theories over answers — including allegedly hallucinated ones — attributed to the Journal and the Post. Perplexity tried to escape New York, moving to dismiss for improper venue or transfer to California; Judge Failla denied the motion in full in August 2025, pointing to Perplexity’s New York office, staff and marketing, and holding its user-agreement forum clause does not bind publishers who never used the product as customers. The case is now deep in discovery, including court-ordered searches of the founders’ personal email accounts.
Key developments
- 2024-10-21 — Dow Jones and the New York Post sue — the first major U.S. publisher case aimed squarely at a retrieval-augmented answer engine rather than model training alone.
- 2025-02-18 — Perplexity moves to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue, or to transfer the case to the Northern District of California.
- 2025-08-21 — Judge Failla denies Perplexity’s motion in full; the case stays in the S.D.N.Y.
- 2026-03-20 — At a discovery conference, Failla orders Perplexity to search its founders’ personal email accounts — used for company business — from January 2022 through February 2026, with production due July 15, 2026.
Why it matters for training data
Retrieval is not a loophole: grounded, cite-and-summarize products face the same copyright exposure as training pipelines, with trademark exposure stacked on top when outputs misattribute. And consumer EULA venue clauses will not drag rights holders to a vendor’s home forum. Buyers of RAG services should treat content licensing for the index as seriously as licensing for training.
Sources
- CourtListener docket: Dow Jones v. Perplexity AI
- Bloomberg Law: Perplexity can’t escape Dow Jones suit
- Loeb & Loeb: venue ruling summary (Aug. 2025)
- Inner City Press: March 2026 discovery order on founders’ emails
Deeper analysis
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