Case updates

For more details and doc­u­ments, see Court Lis­tener.

Jan­u­ary 25, 2024

Con­sis­tent with the Court’s order of Jan­u­ary 22, Plain­tiffs filed their sec­ond amended com­plaint.

Jan­u­ary 22, 2024

On Novem­ber 9, 2023, the Court held a hear­ing on the motions to dis­miss filed by Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI on June 29. In its order fol­low­ing the hear­ing, the Court allowed the plain­tiffs’ breach-of-con­tract claims to con­tinue. The Court also agreed that the plain­tiffs have stand­ing to pro­ceed with claims for dam­ages. The Court dis­missed some of plain­tiffs’ other state-law claims as being pre­empted by the U.S. Copy­right Act. The Court restricted the appli­ca­tion of the DMCA, but gave plain­tiffs per­mis­sion to amend their DMCA claim in a sec­ond amended com­plaint.

July 27, 2023

Plain­tiffs filed oppo­si­tions to defen­dants’ motions to dis­miss the first amended com­plaint.

June 29, 2023

Microsoft / GitHub and OpenAI filed motions to dis­miss Plain­tiffs’ first amended com­plaint.

June 8, 2023

Con­sis­tent with the Court’s order of May 11, Plain­tiffs filed an amended com­plaint.

May 11, 2023

On Thurs­day May 4, the Court held a hear­ing on the motions to dis­miss filed by Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI, as well as a motion filed by the plain­tiffs to pre­serve their anonymity. In its order fol­low­ing the hear­ing, the Court largely allowed the plain­tiffs’ com­plaint to move for­ward, agree­ing that the plain­tiffs have stand­ing to pro­ceed with claims for injunc­tive relief and uphold­ing the suf­fi­ciency of most of plain­tiffs’ sub­stan­tive claims.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance, the Court com­pletely denied defen­dants’ efforts to dis­miss two of plain­tiffs’ most sig­nif­i­cant claims, namely the breach of open-source licenses (see p.22 of the order) and the removal of copy­right-man­age­ment infor­ma­tion under DMCA § 1202(b)(1) and § 1202(b)(3) (see p.21).

Beyond that, as is com­mon in cases like this, the Court has given the plain­tiffs per­mis­sion to address remain­ing plead­ing issues by fil­ing an amended com­plaint (by June 8). The plain­tiffs also pre­vailed on their motion to pre­serve their anonymity (see p.14).

Over­all we con­sider this a pos­i­tive rul­ing for the plain­tiffs and an impor­tant first step in the lit­i­ga­tion. The Court has set a case-man­age­ment con­fer­ence for July 11, 2023 at which time the par­ties will dis­cuss a dis­cov­ery plan and set­ting a sched­ule for future events in the case.

March 10, 2023

Plain­tiffs filed oppo­si­tions to these motions to dis­miss.

Jan­u­ary 26, 2023

Microsoft / GitHub and OpenAI filed motions to dis­miss Plain­tiffs’ com­plaint.

Novem­ber 10, 2022

Sec­ond com­plaint filed on behalf of two more plain­tiffs.

Plain­tiffs would later con­sol­i­date the two com­plaints into a sin­gle com­plaint.

Novem­ber 3, 2022

Ini­tial com­plaint filed on behalf of two plain­tiffs.