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What was the case about?
ANI Media Private Limited (“ANI”) sued OpenAI, Inc. (“OpenAI”) before the Delhi High Court (“the Court”)1, alleging that ChatGPT unlawfully used ANI’s copyrighted news content (“the Alleged Infringement”).2 ANI also applied to temporarily restrain OpenAI but the Court dismissed that application in July 2026 finding no infringement at first sight3, and noting that ANI had not shown lost subscribers or revenue.4 This, coupled with ANI’s ability to block OpenAI’s crawlers5, rendered a restraint unnecessary.
The litigation witnessed events typical to intellectual property and technology disputes, such as voluntary partial cessation (OpenAI ‘blocklisted,’ ANI in October 2024)6, incorrect joinder (ANI initially arrayed OpenAI OpCo LLC)7, and exemption from mandatory pre-institution mediation.8
What were the main issues?
ANI’s application raised four principal issues but the Court’s treatment of fair dealing under Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957 (“Copyright Act”) carries the widest significance, offering India’s first substantive judicial guidance on AI training and copyright. The Court accepted ANI’s ownership of its articles but reiterated that copyright protects expression, not underlying facts.9 Since news can be expressed in limited ways, the threshold for establishing infringement is higher.10 It also found that ChatGPT does not reproduce ANI’s work verbatim but generates output in different form.11
On fair dealing, the Court held that the training data sat in a closed, non-public environment12; therefore, OpenAI’s use qualified as “private” use. It rejected the argument that this defence applies only to non-commercial use, noting that Parliament imposed a non-commercial limitation elsewhere in the Copyright Act but not here.13 The Court also found ChatGPT’s outputs transformative, not substitutive14, and credited LLM’s contribution to research, innovation, and knowledge dissemination.15 The Court concluded OpenAI’s training use qualified as fair dealing, but left open whether the same reasoning would extend to more expressive works such as music, film, or literature, where the fact-expression distinction carries less force.
What does this judgement mean for procedure and precedent?
The Court’s dismissal is neither precedential, nor conclusive, and remains appealable. Such orders are decided before the evidence stages and do not constitute authoritative precedents.16 Moreover, the restrain application is only a subset of the broader suit. The Court itself caveated that the dismissal “would have no bearing on the final outcome of the suit.”17 and several crucial questions18, were matters of trial.19
What comes next?
ANI has the right to appeal20 (within an unexpired 60-day deadline21) before a Division Bench of the Court22, or file an application for discharge, setting aside, or variance23, or amend its plaint since it did not plead infringement over Retrieval-Augmented Generation outputs.24 OpenAI may continue using ANI’s work pending further proceeding, though it had already voluntarily blocklisted ANI.
For AI developers, the ruling is favourable but fact-bound rather than doctrinal, resting on the news-specific fact-expression divide rather than an endorsement of AI training as fair dealing.
Footnotes
1 C.S. (Comm.) 1028 of 2024.
2 Order dated 19.11.2024.
3 Order dated 24.07.2026, para 256.
4 Order dated 24.07.2026, para 264.
5 Order dated 24.07.2026, para 262.
6 Order dated 19.11.2024.
7 Order dated 31.01.2025.
8 Order dated 19.11.2024.
9 Order dated 24.07.2026, paras 69-73.
10 Order dated 24.07.2026, paras 122.
11 Order dated 24.07.2026, paras 241-247.
12 Order dated 24.07.2026, paras 211.
13 Order dated 24.07.2026, paras 177-179.
14 Order dated 24.07.2026, paras 250-251.
15 Order dated 24.07.2026, para 253.
16 State of Assam v. Barak Upatyaka, (2009) 5 SCC 694
17 Order dated 24.07.2026, para 274.
18 Order dated 24.07.2026, para 124.
19 Order dated 24.07.2026, para 70.
20 Order 43, Rule 1(r) of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.
21 Section 13(1A) of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015.
22 Section 10(1) of the Delhi High Court Act, 1966.
23 Order 39, Rule 4 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.
24 Order dated 24.07.2026, para 84.
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