Background
Encyclopædia Britannica and Merriam-Webster brought this Southern District of New York action against multiple OpenAI entities, alleging that OpenAI copied and used their trusted encyclopaedia, dictionary, and reference content without permission to build and monetise ChatGPT and related products, thereby diverting traffic, subscription value, and advertising revenue from the plaintiffs. The complaint also places the case within the broader SDNY OpenAI copyright MDL (ECFs 12, 18, 21, 25).
AI Interaction
The complaint frames the AI interaction as a dual-use misappropriation model: OpenAI allegedly copied plaintiffs’ works at scale both for LLM training and again through retrieval-augmented generation or grounding systems, then used those systems to generate outputs that could reproduce, closely paraphrase, summarise, or replicate the plaintiffs’ original expression and curated selection and ordering of material; it further alleges trademark-related harm where ChatGPT attributed hallucinated or incomplete outputs to Britannica or Merriam-Webster, with pleaded examples including near-verbatim outputs for Britannica’s “Education” and “Tourism” articles, reproduction of Merriam-Webster’s definition of “plagiarize”, and copying of Britannica’s ordered Hamilton-Burr duel list (ECF 12).
Notes:
- On 1 April 2026, Judge Stein ordered Britannica and Merriam-Webster to show cause why this action should not be stayed pending resolution of summary judgment motions in the other active MDL cases.
- On 6 April 2026, Magistrate Judge Wang set a 12 May 2026 in-person status conference in the MDL, with briefing due between 29 April and 5 May 2026.