Federal Judge Allows Copyright Infringement Claim Against Databricks to Proceed
A federal judge in California declined to dismiss authors' copyright infringement claims against Databricks and MosaicML over the companies' DBRX series of AI models, ruling that the allegations sufficiently connect the alleged copying to the models themselves.
The authors alleged that Databricks and MosaicML copied books from "shadow libraries"-online repositories of pirated works-to train their large-language models. The companies had moved to dismiss the claim, arguing the authors failed to show the copying occurred during DBRX's actual training phase.
Databricks and MosaicML contended that because the authors only alleged copying happened during early development, not in the final training dataset, the infringement claim was too distant from the actual DBRX product. The court rejected this argument.
Judge Charles Breyer found the complaint sufficiently alleged that at least one exclusive copyright right was violated. The authors directly tied their copyrighted works to DBRX, and employee statements in the complaint provided supporting inferences when read in context, the court said.
The defendants also argued that employee statements had previously failed to support a claim. But the court found those statements, combined with other allegations in the complaint, were enough to survive dismissal at this stage.
Breyer ruled that determining whether the copying was too distant from the final product required factual evidence outside the pleadings-a question inappropriate for a motion to dismiss. The case will proceed to discovery, where both sides can obtain documents and testimony.
The decision matters for writers and content creators because it establishes that copyright claims tied to generative AI and LLM training can survive initial legal hurdles even when the precise mechanics of model development remain unclear. As AI for Legal issues continue to develop, courts are allowing these cases to move forward rather than dismissing them on technical pleading grounds.
Your membership also unlocks:
