Khaitan & Co successfully represented OpenAI Inc and OpenAI OpCo (collectively known as OpenAI), the developers of ChatGPT, in a landmark copyright dispute brought by an Indian news agency, ANI Media (ANI) before the Delhi High Court. In a significant and precedent-setting ruling dated 24 July 2026, Justice Amit Bansal dismissed ANI’s application for an interim injunction against OpenAI. This is India’s first judicial ruling to consider the application of copyright law and the fair dealing exception under the Copyright Act 1957, in context of the training and operation of artificial intelligence systems, including large language models (LLMs).
ANI alleged that OpenAI’s use and storage of ANI’s publicly available news content for training the LLMs underlying ChatGPT infringed its copyright (Training Claim). It also contended that certain ChatGPT outputs reproduced or paraphrased its articles and, in isolated instances, incorrectly attributed content to ANI (Output Claim).
Opposing the application for interim relief, OpenAI argued that its use of publicly accessible content for AI training was lawful, transparent and did not require a licence. OpenAI further submitted that publishers could prevent access to their content through established web protocols and that it did not train its models on paywalled or subscription-only content. It also argued that the use of publicly available material for training AI models is protected as fair dealing under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act and therefore does not constitute copyright infringement.
In response to the Output Claim, OpenAI submitted that ChatGPT does not reproduce ANI’s works verbatim and that ANI had failed to identify similarities between ChatGPT’s outputs and its copyrighted works that would amount to infringement. OpenAI further argued that any overlap related only to unprotectable factual material and that the isolated attribution errors relied upon by ANI were rare and had been promptly addressed.
The Court accepted OpenAI’s submissions at the prima facie stage. On ANI’s Training Claim, the Court held that OpenAI’s storage of ANI’s works fell within the protection of Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act and did not amount to infringement. On the Output Claim, the Court found that ChatGPT’s outputs were not substantially similar to ANI’s works, and that ANI had failed to establish any memorisation or regurgitation of its content through ChatGPT’s responses. The Court accordingly held that ANI had failed to establish a prima facie case for interim relief. It also found that the balance of convenience did not favour ANI and that an injunction would cause irreparable harm to OpenAI and to the public at large.
The ruling marks a significant interim development in one of India’s first disputes addressing the intersection of artificial intelligence, copyright law and innovation. It also provides important judicial guidance on the application of India’s copyright framework to AI training and generative AI outputs.
The Khaitan & Co team was led by Sanjeev Kapoor (Senior Partner), Nirupam Lodha (Partner), Madhav Khosla (Partner), Gautam Wadhwa (Senior Associate), Abhi Udai Singh Gautam (Associate) and Rebecca Cardoso (Associate). Senior Advocate Amit Sibal led the arguments on behalf of OpenAI.
