Lawsuit tracker
Ziff Davis v. OpenAI
Ziff Davis, Inc., et al. v. OpenAI, Inc., et al., No. 1:25-cv-04315 (S.D.N.Y., MDL No. 3143); originally filed as No. 1:25-cv-00501 (D. Del.)
| Plaintiffs | Ziff Davis and subsidiaries — brands include PCMag, Mashable, IGN, CNET, ZDNET, Lifehacker and Everyday Health |
|---|---|
| Defendants | OpenAI entities |
| Court | U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (MDL No. 3143, Judge Sidney H. Stein); filed in the District of Delaware and transferred |
| Filed | 2025-04-24 |
| Status | Active |
| Content type | journalism |
| Last updated | 2026-07-21 |
The claims
Copyright infringement (direct and contributory), DMCA §1202 copyright-management-information claims, a DMCA §1201 circumvention claim over ignored robots.txt files (dismissed), trademark dilution (narrowed to the Mashable mark) and unjust enrichment (dismissed).
What has happened
Ziff Davis sued OpenAI in Delaware, alleging its web content was scraped and used to train GPT models even after the company deployed robots.txt directives blocking OpenAI’s GPTBot — and that bot activity on its sites spiked anyway. The judicial panel moved the case into the OpenAI MDL in New York within a month. In December 2025, Judge Stein advanced the contributory-infringement and CMI-removal claims and left the core direct-infringement counts untouched, while dismissing the unjust-enrichment and §1201 circumvention theories — writing that a robots.txt file no more controls access than a “keep off the grass” sign controls a lawn. He also limited trademark dilution to the Mashable brand and stayed discovery into newer model generations (o1, o3, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.5, GPT-5 and others) not otherwise at issue in the MDL.
Key developments
- 2025-04-24 — Ziff Davis files a 62-page complaint in the District of Delaware — at the time the most prominent U.S. digital publisher without an OpenAI licensing deal to sue.
- 2025-05-22 — The case is transferred into MDL No. 3143 before Judge Stein in the S.D.N.Y.
- 2025-12-15 — Judge Stein advances the contributory-infringement and DMCA CMI-removal claims, dismisses the §1201 robots.txt circumvention and unjust-enrichment claims, narrows trademark dilution to Mashable, and stays discovery on newer ChatGPT models.
- 2026-07-09 — Ziff Davis joins the newspaper plaintiffs’ sanctions motion alleging OpenAI concealed and destroyed discovery evidence. The motion is pending.
Why it matters for training data
The robots.txt holding is the headline for suppliers: a crawl directive is not a technological protection measure under §1201, so disallow lines alone carry no anti-circumvention teeth. Publishers need real technical controls plus contract terms; ignoring robots.txt can still feed infringement and CMI claims, but it is not hacking. The model-generation stay also shows courts will fence discovery to the specific model versions accused.
Sources
- Courthouse News: Ziff Davis sues OpenAI (April 2025)
- Courthouse News: Stein advances Ziff Davis claims (Dec. 2025)
- CourtListener docket (S.D.N.Y., post-transfer)
- Variety: Ziff Davis among outlets seeking sanctions
Deeper analysis
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