Judge Kaplan denies Runway's motion to dismiss YouTube creators' AI-training scraping suit

On 30 October 2026, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York denied Runway AI's motion to dismiss the consolidated class action complaint in Ace Cam, Inc. v. Runway AI, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-01362 (docket entry 61, a memorandum opinion denying motion 34, filed 27 May 2026). Plaintiffs Ace Cam, Businessing and Gardner allege Runway circumvented YouTube's technological protection measures to scrape creators' videos to train its Gen-2, Gen-3 and Gen-4 video models, in violation of DMCA section 1201(a).

What this establishes: the case survives the motion to dismiss and proceeds; it is not a finding that Runway infringed or circumvented anything. It is distinct from the 2 October 2026 ByteDance motion-to-dismiss denial in the parallel Ted Entertainment case, which plaintiffs cited as supplemental authority on 6 October.