DiCello Levitt, Co-Counsel Defeat Motion to Dismiss in Landmark AI Copyright Case
A federal judge in the Southern District of New York has denied Bloomberg L.P.’s motion to dismiss a proposed class action lawsuit led by DiCello Levitt, alleging copyright infringement in the development of BloombergGPT, the company’s finance-focused AI program.
The plaintiffs, a group of authors and copyright holders, including Ambassador Mike Huckabee, claim that Bloomberg used their copyrighted works, without permission or compensation, to train its AI using the Books3 dataset. Bloomberg argued that the complaint lacked specificity and that its use of the works was protected by the fair use doctrine.
In her ruling, Judge Margaret M. Garnett found that the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged copyright infringement and that the fair use defense could not be resolved at this early stage. The court emphasized that a robust factual record is needed to address complex questions about the impact of AI training on the market for original works.
The case will now move to discovery. The decision marks an important development in the ongoing debate over copyright and artificial intelligence.
DiCello Levitt’s team includes Amy Keller, Nada Djordjevic, Greg Gutzler, Adam Levitt, and James Ulwick. Co-counsel include Seth Haines and Timothy Hutchinson of RMP, LLP and Scott Poynter of Poynter Law Group. The case is Huckabee et al. v. Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Finance L.P., No. 1:23-CV-09152.
