Canadian Media vs. OpenAI: Ontario Court Gives A Procedural Greenlight

A group of major Canadian media organizations (the "Plaintiffs") has scored an early procedural victory against OpenAI in Ontario. Justice Kimmel of the Ontario Superior Court held that Ontario has jurisdiction over the Plaintiffs' claims and is the appropriate forum. This procedural victory is encouraging for Canadian publishers because it lets Canadian courts adjudicate AI training disputes involving copyrighted material under Canadian copyright law.

The Plaintiffs sued a number of OpenAI entities in Ontario for copyright infringement, breach of contract and unjust enrichment arising from the Internet-based activities of OpenAI. These activities included allegedly scraping the Plaintiffs' web content and data, which included copyrighted content, using that data to train AI models, and reproducing and using the copyrighted content for commercial purposes (such as ChatGPT). OpenAI asked the Court to dismiss the proceeding on the basis that the OpenAI entities are based in the United States and should not have to litigate this case in Ontario.

The Court disagreed. It held that it has subject matter jurisdiction over all the asserted claims and that the Plaintiffs had established presumptive connecting factors for the Court to assume jurisdiction over at least some of the OpenAI entities because key aspects of the OpenAI business and the alleged wrongdoing were meaningfully tied to Ontario. For example, OpenAI allegedly scraped data from Canadian websites, made contractual agreements in Ontario, and made commercial offerings in Ontario. The Court also held that OpenAI failed to demonstrate that the United States was clearly the more appropriate forum for the pleaded claims.

Click here to read the full case.