Hub: AI Copyright

CNN announced a multi-year AI partnership with Google for experimental features and content rights. No financial terms. Reuters and Variety add context.

The New York Times, The Economist and AFP join more than 40 publishers signing up to SPUR, a coalition setting standards for AI use of news content.

On 8 October 2026, USA Today Co. and 13 affiliated companies, covering 19 publications, filed a copyright lawsuit against seven OpenAI entities in federal court in New York, seeking "damages in excess of $250 million". The filing is confirmed; everything in it is the publishers' allegation. Here is what they claim, and what happens to such cases procedurally.

On 7 September 2026 China's Supreme People's Court published Opinions on hearing AI-related disputes: 24 articles covering fault-based liability, notice-and-takedown, training-data evidence, open-source safe harbour and AI-generated court filings. These are court guidance applying existing statutes — China has no dedicated AI law yet.

The Third Circuit affirmed that 2,243 Westlaw headnotes are copyrightable and that ROSS's use of them to train a non-generative legal search tool was not fair use. Law firm Ballard Spahr calls it the first appellate AI fair-use ruling — with a big caveat for generative AI.