Delhi High Court division bench issues notice on ANI's appeal in its copyright suit against OpenAI

What happened

On 15 September 2026, a division bench of the Delhi High Court (Justices Avneesh Jhingan and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora) issued notice to OpenAI on the appeal filed by news agency ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. in *ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI OpCo LLC*, CS(COMM) 1028/2024. The bench granted no immediate interim direction, and declined to rule on OpenAI's earlier undertaking not to scrape ANI's website until OpenAI had been heard. An intervention application by the Broadband India Forum, which argues the case has global implications for AI training, is to be decided at the next hearing.

Background

ANI sued OpenAI in 2024, alleging its news content was used without permission to train ChatGPT. On 24 July 2026 a single judge dismissed ANI's application for an interim injunction, holding prima facie that the training use fell within fair dealing for research under section 52(1)(a) of India's Copyright Act 1957, that the outputs were not substantially similar, and that ANI had not shown memorisation or regurgitation of its reporting. ANI filed its appeal on 8 September 2026.

Why it may matter to you

This is now the appellate test of whether training a commercial AI model on a news publisher's reporting is fair dealing under Indian law. The single judge's reasoning favoured the AI company at the interim stage; the division bench's eventual ruling will be the most senior Indian authority yet on training-data copyright.

What is not yet known

Issuing notice is a procedural step, not a view on the merits. No interim relief has been granted, the appeal has not been decided, and no court has made a final finding on whether OpenAI's training use infringes ANI's copyright.