OpenAI and Microsoft filed a response to the news plaintiffs’ statement of facts on 24 October in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The filing forms part of the consolidated OpenAI copyright infringement litigation and sets out which assertions the defendants contest for the plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment. Its fourth volume covers the plaintiffs’ allegations about the effects of using news content, including a dispute over whether ChatGPT and Copilot direct users to other websites.
Key points
- The 24 October filing is Volume IV of the defendants’ response to the news plaintiffs’ corrected statement of facts for partial summary judgment.
- OpenAI and Microsoft argue that the plaintiffs’ statement is too long to meet Local Civil Rule 56.1(a).
- The defendants say a fact they mark “Undisputed” is accepted only for this motion, not admitted for other purposes.
- In paragraph 1422, they contest an implication about links to external websites and object to the plaintiffs’ use of a third-party webpage as evidence.
OpenAI challenges the Rule 56.1 statement
The filing, docketed as document 2269-3 in case 1:25-md-03143-SHS-OTW, is titled “Defendants’ Response to News Plaintiffs’ Rule 56.1 Statement.” It responds to the plaintiffs’ corrected statement of material facts in support of their motion for partial summary judgment. The cover identifies five related cases: 1:23-cv-11195-SHS-OTW, 1:24-cv-01515-SHS-OTW, 1:24-cv-03285-SHS-OTW, 1:24-cv-04872-SHS-OTW and 1:25-cv-04315-SHS-OTW.
Local Civil Rule 56.1(a) requires the party seeking summary judgment to submit a separate, short statement of the material facts it contends are beyond genuine dispute, arranged in numbered paragraphs. OpenAI and Microsoft argue that the news plaintiffs’ submission breaches that requirement because of its length. They say its size has made a full response difficult to prepare in a form useful to the court, and cite a Southern District of New York decision that struck a lengthy statement under the same rule.
The defendants use three principal answers to individual assertions: “Undisputed”, “Disputed” and “Disputed in Part”. They say the first means only that they have chosen not to contest the fact for the plaintiffs’ present summary-judgment motion. They expressly reserve their position for other purposes, rather than treating that answer as a binding admission. The other two answers identify assertions they contest, in whole or in part.
OpenAI and Microsoft also set out objections they apply where appropriate to individual paragraphs. A fact labelled “Immaterial”, they argue, would not affect the outcome of the questions before the court on summary judgment even if it were true. Their “Not Supported by Cited Evidence” label covers an assertion whose citation is incorrect or whose cited material does not support it. A separate label, “Not Supported by Admissible Evidence”, challenges whether the material offered can be used as evidence under Local Rule 56.1(d).
The defendants describe another objection, “Improper Legal Argument”, as applying to assertions they regard as conclusory or as attorney argument rather than fact. They use “Incomplete” where they contend that another part of a statement ought to be considered alongside the passage the plaintiffs supplied, invoking Federal Rule of Evidence 106. The filing says the defendants incorporate their stated grounds for these objections into the individual responses, with further paragraph-specific information where they consider it useful to the court.
Volume IV covers news-content markets
Volume IV is designated for facts 1422 to 1825. Its section on the effects of defendants’ use and copying of news and journalism content is divided into markets for news content, news-content licensing and licensing data for generative AI. The contents also identify sections on other alleged effects on the news plaintiffs and on the public. Those are the subjects of the plaintiffs’ assertions to which the defendants are responding, rather than findings by the court.
Under other alleged effects on the plaintiffs, the contents name “pink slime”, hallucinations, other scraping-related harms and anticipated effects from wider proliferation of the conduct at issue. The volume also includes separate sections headed as additional facts from OpenAI and Microsoft under Local Rule 56.1(b). In this filing, the companies’ responses and objections sit alongside facts each defendant has chosen to put forward for the motion.
Paragraph 1422 contests the external-links assertion
The first paragraph reproduced in the supplied portion of Volume IV concerns how generative AI services have been characterised. The news plaintiffs cite an October 2024 Search Engine Land webpage for a description of answer engines that deliver answers without sending users to external websites. OpenAI and Microsoft accept that the cited webpage contains the phrases the plaintiffs quote. They mark the broader assertion “Disputed in Part” and object that it is not supported by admissible evidence.
The defendants dispute the assertion to the extent that it implies ChatGPT or Copilot does not direct users to external websites. They argue that the cited webpage does not support that implication and that it conflicts with the record, referring to another news exhibit. They also object to relying on the third party’s statements as proof that those statements are true, invoking the rule against inadmissible hearsay and the procedure for challenging evidence at summary judgment.
