Mobilguru asks EU top court whether Gemini training and answers infringe press publishers' rights

What happened

Mobilguru, the Hungarian publisher of the technology news site Telefonguru.hu, has brought a case against Google Ireland that is now pending before the Court of Justice of the European Union as Case C-829/26. Mobilguru alleges that Google infringed its press publishers' rights through Bard (later Gemini), and seeks a declaration that Google reproduced its publication and made it available to the public without authorisation between July 2023 and December 2025.

What Mobilguru alleges

Mobilguru cites exchanges with Gemini concerning an iPhone 16 camera rumour, an iPhone 17 Air article and a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 review. It says Gemini produced summaries or answers containing information also featured in its articles and, in one instance, cited the publisher as a principal source. Mobilguru alleges reproduction both during model training and during answer generation, and argues that chatbot responses to users amount to making protected press content available to the public. Google denies that these operations constitute reproduction or communication to the public.

The questions before the Court

The Budapest court referred 11 principal questions to the Court of Justice. They include whether model training constitutes an "information society service"; how Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 (the DSM Directive), which protects press publishers, interacts with the reproduction and making-available rights under Directive 2001/29/EC; how far the text-and-data-mining exception in Article 4 of the DSM Directive covers training-related copies; and how publishers must expressly reserve their rights under Article 4(3) -- through robots.txt, other technical measures or a visible legal notice. The questions also invoke Article 53(1)(c) of the EU AI Act. Mobilguru had not used robots.txt to prevent Google's access to, or AI-related use of, its content; the legal significance of that omission is disputed.

Status

This is a preliminary reference, not a judgment. The alleged infringement remains contested, and the Court has not ruled. The case is the third AI/copyright referral pending before the Court, alongside Like Company (C-250/25) and Manchester United Fanatics Klub (C-806/26); the Like Company opinion of 3 November 2026 is reported in a separate item.