USA Today sues OpenAI in tag-along copyright suit over AI training

USA Today filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the company used its copyrighted articles to train AI models without permission. The complaint raises three claims: direct copyright infringement, vicarious infringement, and DMCA Section 1202 removal of copyright management information (CMI). These are the same three claims that remain in the New York Times' suit against OpenAI.

The suit arrives as the consolidated OpenAI MDL copyright litigation has entered the summary judgment phase. It joins a cluster of publisher tag-along suits already in the library, including Daily News v. Microsoft, California Newspapers Partnership v. Microsoft, Richner Communications v. Microsoft, Seattle Times + Newsday v. OpenAI, Times Publishing Co. v. Microsoft/OpenAI, and Emmerich Newspapers v. Microsoft (filed 2026-10-07, in review queue).

Per the reporting blog's count, OpenAI faces 29 copyright lawsuits in the US, nearly double Meta's 17. All claims are allegations in a newly filed complaint; no court finding is reported.