U.S. Department of Justice submits opinion supporting fair use in OpenAI copyright lawsuit

On September 1 (local time), the U.S. Department of Justice filed an opinion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York regarding multiple copyright infringement lawsuits involving U.S. OpenAI.

A written opinion is a document that expresses the government's view regarding the interests of the United States in pending litigation. Although it is not binding on the court, it may influence judicial decisions.

This includes lawsuits brought against OpenAI and other companies by multiple newspaper companies, publishers, and authors, including The New York Times.

The opinion states that reproduction of copyrighted works during the LLM study stage is a "transformative" use (not a substitute for the original work, but for a different purpose) and constitutes fair use.

When LLMs study texts, they explain that the purpose is to use them as material for learning statistical patterns such as vocabulary and syntax, and not to reproduce the expressions themselves of works. Learning and output should be considered separately, and even if a model can output part of a copyrighted work, it should be separated from the determination of whether learning is fair use.

He also cited the impact on national security. There is a danger that if AI learning requires permission from rights holders, AI development in the United States will stall, while it will give a competitive advantage to competing countries that are not subject to such restrictions.

He also took a stand against the interpretation of the law that requires paid licenses for learning. He points out that only the largest tech companies may be able to bear the licensing fees, which would hinder competition in the LLM market and skew the profits to legacy media with large amounts of content. It is argued that it is not in the public interest for large companies to have an oligopoly on learning.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023. The case is still pending, combined with lawsuits brought by other newspaper companies and book authors. In December 2025, the newspaper also filed a lawsuit against US AI search company Perplexity.