ChatGPT is in the clear says Delhi High Court! Shivam Kaushik brings us a quick update on this order, pronounced just a few minutes ago by Justice Amit Bansal of the Delhi High Court. Shivam is a lawyer based in Delhi. He holds a masters degree in IP and Tech laws from the National University of Singapore.
In a highly anticipated development for India’s emerging artificial intelligence and copyright jurisprudence, the Delhi High Court today pronounced its judgment on ANI’s application seeking interim injunction against OpenAI, the developer of AI chatbot ChatGPT. Justice Amit Bansal dismissed the application prima facie holding that OpenAI’s storage of ANI’s copyrighted works for training the large language models underlying ChatGPT was protected under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957, and therefore did not amount to copyright infringement. The Court also held that ANI had failed to establish that ChatGPT’s outputs were substantially similar to, or involved the memorisation or regurgitation of, its copyrighted works.
Background:
In November 2024, Indian news agency, Asian News International (ANI) Media Pvt. Ltd. filed a copyright infringement suit alleging the unauthorized use, storage, and reproduction of its news material by the American AI company OpenAI Inc. for training the Large Language Model (LLM) underlying its chatbot, ChatGPT. Justice Bansal in the very first order in the case, culled out the following key issues for consideration:
- Whether the storage by the defendants of plaintiff’s data (which is in the nature of news and is claimed to be protected under the Copyright Act, 1957) for training its software i.e., ChatGPT, would amount to infringement of plaintiff’s copyright.
- Whether the use by the defendants of plaintiff’s copyrighted data in order to generate responses for its users, would amount to infringement of the plaintiff’s copyright.
- Whether the defendants’ use of plaintiff’s copyrighted data qualifies as ‘fair use’ in terms of Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957.
- Whether the Courts in India have jurisdiction to entertain the present lawsuit considering that the servers of the defendants are located in the United States of America.
He also appointed two amici curiae– Advocate Adarsh Ramanujan and Prof. Arul Scaria- to assist the court in the matter. Various intervenors also filed intervention applications in the matter. The amici submitted written submissions to the court and made oral submissions on 21.02.2025, 10.03.2025, 20.03.2026, and 27.03.2026, on the legal position concerning the use of copyrighted works for training generative-AI models, including whether such use constitutes infringement and is protected under the fair-dealing exceptions in the Copyright Act, 1957.
Justice Bansal head arguments of the parties on the interim injunction application filed by ANI on various dates starting from 10.03.2025 and then reserved judgment on 27.03.2026.
The Pronouncement
Justice Bansal decided the four issues identified by the Court, and gave common findings on three issues on storage, output infringement, and fair use under s.52. On the preliminary question of territorial jurisdiction, the Court ruled in ANI’s favour and held that the suit was maintainable before the Delhi High Court.
On the merits however, J. Bansal held that OpenAI’s use of ANI’s works for training its models was, prima facie, protected under the Copyright Act. Justice Bansal observed that “OpenAI’s act of storing ANI’s original literary works for training the LLMs underlying ChatGPT falls under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act” and, therefore, “does not amount to infringement under Section 51.”
The Court also rejected ANI’s allegation of infringement in relation to ChatGPT’s outputs generated using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). It held that “outputs generated by ChatGPT using the RAG technique do not amount to infringement under Section 51 of the Copyright Act,” since the outputs generated by OpenAI “were not substantially similar to ANI’s copyrighted works.” Justice Bansal further observed that ANI had “failed to satisfy this Court that any memorisation or regurgitation of ANI’s original literary works has happened in the responses generated by ChatGPT.”
Consequently, the Court held that ANI had failed to make out a prima facie case for grant of interim injunction. Taking note of the public interest in the case, J. Bansal was also of the view that “irreparable injury would be caused not only to OpenAI but also to the public at large” if an interim injunction were granted in ANI’s favour at this stage. The Court accordingly dismissed ANI’s interim-injunction application.
P.S.: This update is based on the pronouncement made in open court by Justice Bansal and the copy of the judgment is still awaited, which we anticipate will be uploaded on the Delhi High Court website (hopefully) by the evening. Happy reading weekend!
