The court said ANI could not show enough evidence that ChatGPT had copied or reproduced its original reports, allowing the copyright dispute to move forward without temporary restrictions on OpenAI.
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The Delhi High Court on Friday, July 24, refused to grant interim relief to Asian News International (ANI) in its copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The decision means OpenAI will not face any temporary restrictions while the case continues before the court.
Justice Amit Bansal, while delivering the order, said the court had ruled in ANI’s favour on the issue of territorial jurisdiction, meaning the Delhi High Court has the authority to hear the case. However, the court found that ANI had not made a strong enough initial case to justify an interim injunction against OpenAI.
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A detailed copy of the judgment is yet to be released.
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Justice Bansal said that, at this stage, he was of the prima facie view that OpenAI’s storage of ANI’s original works falls under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, which deals with certain permitted uses of copyrighted material. Therefore, the act did not amount to copyright infringement.
The judge also observed that the responses generated by ChatGPT did not appear to violate Section 51 of the Copyright Act, as the AI-generated outputs were not substantially similar to ANI’s original works.
The court further said ANI had failed to show that ChatGPT had memorised and reproduced its news reports in a way that would amount to copyright infringement. According to the judge, ANI could not establish a prima facie case for the grant of interim relief.
Justice Bansal also noted that granting an interim injunction could cause irreparable harm not only to OpenAI but also to the public, and therefore dismissed ANI’s application for temporary relief.
The case is considered the first lawsuit in India involving ChatGPT. Summons in the matter were issued by the Delhi High Court in November 2024.
ANI has accused OpenAI of commercially exploiting its original news reports. The news agency alleged that ChatGPT reproduces its content word-for-word in response to user queries.
ANI also claimed that ChatGPT has wrongly attributed statements and news reports to the agency that it never published. According to ANI, such AI-generated mistakes, commonly called “hallucinations”, can damage its reputation, spread false information, and even create a risk of public disorder.
OpenAI challenged the maintainability of the lawsuit in India. The company argued that its AI models are not trained in India and that its servers are located in the United States.
It also defended its technology by saying its machine learning process is transformative rather than a simple copying system. OpenAI argued that facts contained in news reports cannot themselves be protected by copyright.
The company further said publishers who do not want their content to be crawled can request inclusion on a blocklist.
The High Court had appointed Dr. Arul George Scaria, Professor of Law at the National Law School of India University, as amicus curiae to assist the court.
Scaria argued that the Delhi High Court has jurisdiction to hear the case. He also explained that copyrighted material can be used in two different ways: expressive use and non-expressive use.
According to him, non-expressive use generally does not amount to copyright infringement. He also stated that even expressive use may be legally permitted in certain situations. Scaria submitted that OpenAI in most cases uses ANI’s content in a non-expressive manner.
The lawsuit will now continue before the Delhi High Court, while the detailed order explaining the court’s reasoning is awaited.
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