Delhi HC Hears Arguments in ANI vs. OpenAI Copyright Case

In the copyright infringement case brought by Asian News International (ANI) against OpenAI, amicus curiae Adarsh Ramanujan presented arguments before the Delhi High Court, asserting that the news agency's allegations of infringement are without merit.

Ramanujan argued that OpenAI’s large language model (LLM) does not replicate original content but instead predicts language patterns, categorizing it as a case of "non-expressive" use.

“The way the model works is that it only processes numbers. Every expression or dataset provided to the program is broken down into individual tokens,” Ramanujan explained in his submission. He further explained that the model is designed to predict content accuracy without directly reproducing original data, stating that “There is no reproduction of the original data during the training loop.”

While reviewing his report, Ramanujan noted that infringement could only be proven if ANI demonstrated that ChatGPT's output directly extracted the "expressive" portion of a news article. He also highlighted that the current argument centers around 'fair use,' whereas Indian copyright law mandates an evaluation based on 'fair dealing.'

Meanwhile, a separate report submitted by amicus curiae Arul George Scaria informed the court that it has jurisdiction to hear ANI’s copyright case against OpenAI. In response to the issue of territorial jurisdiction, Ramanujan argued that ANI should not be forced to take the case to a foreign court merely because the alleged infringement took place outside India. “If the plaintiff has a right under Indian law, he must have a remedy under Indian law. A foreign court will not have jurisdiction over Indian copyright,” he noted.

ANI countered by claiming that under Indian copyright law, the author of a work is the initial owner of the copyright, unless the content is created as part of employment or through a contractual agreement for publication.