Lawsuit tracker
News Corp v. Brave
Brave Software, Inc. v. News Corp et al. (N.D. Cal., Oakland); News Corp copyright counterclaims filed July 21, 2026
| Plaintiffs | News Corp and affiliates including Dow Jones and the New York Post (counterclaimants; defendants in Brave’s declaratory suit) |
|---|---|
| Defendants | Brave Software, Inc. |
| Court | U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Oakland) |
| Filed | 2026-07-21 |
| Status | Active |
| Content type | News articles |
| Last updated | 2026-07-22 |
The claims
Copyright infringement over alleged covert scraping and resale of Wall Street Journal and New York Post articles to AI companies; News Corp seeks an injunction and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work.
What has happened
Brave, the browser and search company, sued News Corp preemptively in March 2025 after receiving a cease-and-desist letter, asking the court to declare that indexing News Corp content and serving snippets and summaries is fair use; it filed a revised complaint in May 2026 after licensing negotiations failed. On July 21, 2026, News Corp countersued, alleging Brave masks its web crawlers so publishers cannot detect or block them, and that it delivered verbatim or near-verbatim copies of articles to enterprise customers, primarily AI companies — conduct News Corp said falls nowhere near the bounds of fair use. News Corp also alleged that before March 2025 Brave scraped and sold its content to AI companies that compete directly with News Corp’s own content-licensing programs.
Key developments
- 2025-03 — Brave sues News Corp in the N.D. Cal., seeking a declaration that its indexing, snippets and summaries are lawful.
- 2026-05 — Brave files a revised complaint after negotiations for a licensing agreement fail.
- 2026-07-21 — News Corp files copyright counterclaims accusing Brave of covert scraping and resale of its articles to AI companies, seeking up to $150,000 per infringed work.
Why it matters for training data
The fight is over the scraping layer of the AI data supply chain. News Corp’s theory is that a search intermediary reselling article text to AI companies undercuts the licenses publishers now sell directly — News Corp has its own deals with OpenAI and Meta — so the case tests whether AI-adjacent middlemen need licenses of their own. A ruling either way would reprice how AI companies source news content they have not licensed.
Sources
- Reuters (via Yahoo Finance) — News Corp countersues Brave for allegedly scraping articles for AI
- Editor & Publisher — News Corp accuses search engine Brave of AI copyright infringement
Deeper analysis
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