Delhi High Court Declines Interim Relief to ANI in Copyright Suit Against OpenAI

In an interim ruling on July 24, 2026, the Delhi High Court refused to grant an injunction to news agency ANI in its copyright suit against OpenAI. Justice Amit Bansal held, prima facie, that OpenAI's use of ANI's content to train its models fell within the fair dealing exception under India's Copyright Act. The court found that ANI had failed to establish that ChatGPT memorized or reproduced its reports, and stated that requiring licenses from multiple sources would make developing large language models economically unviable.

Delhi High Court AI ruling

• ▪Justice Amit Bansal of the Delhi High Court held, on a prima facie basis at the interim stage, that OpenAI's use of Asian News International's literary works to train its models fell within the fair dealing exception and did not amount to copyright infringement
• ▪The Delhi High Court's decision is the first substantive judicial finding in India regarding whether artificial intelligence companies can train models on copyrighted content without a license
• ▪The Delhi High Court on July 24, 2026, refused to grant interim relief to Asian News International in its copyright infringement suit against OpenAI

Fair dealing defense

• ▪The Delhi High Court rejected Asian News International's argument that commercial entities are automatically excluded from claiming the fair dealing defense under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act
• ▪The Delhi High Court held, prima facie and for the purpose of the interim application, that OpenAI's storage and use of Asian News International's articles for training fell within the fair dealing exception under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act

ChatGPT copyright infringement claims

• ▪Asian News International sued OpenAI in November 2024, alleging unauthorized use of its copyrighted news reports to train ChatGPT and the generation of fabricated stories falsely attributed to the agency
• ▪The Delhi High Court observed that Asian News International failed to establish that ChatGPT memorized, reproduced, or generated responses substantially similar to the agency's original literary works

Jurisdiction over foreign servers

• ▪The Delhi High Court asserted jurisdiction over the suit because ChatGPT is offered to users in India and the alleged copyright infringement was claimed to have occurred in India
• ▪The Delhi High Court rejected OpenAI's argument that Indian courts lacked jurisdiction over the training claim because OpenAI's servers are located in the United States

AI training data licensing

• ▪The Delhi High Court noted that Asian News International offered a content license to OpenAI for USD 7.5 million on October 2, 2024, which OpenAI declined
• ▪The Delhi High Court observed that developing large language models would be economically unviable if training required licenses from multiple individual sources

Content creator compensation strategies

• ▪Jameela Sahiba of tech policy advocacy group The Dialogue suggested content companies develop commercial licensing models, strengthen contractual restrictions, and implement technical measures to manage automated scraping
• ▪Ankit Sahni of Ajay Sahni Associates stated that the interim order has the potential to influence how AI developers and copyright owners approach protected content for training