In a noteworthy development, Microsoft lawyers communicated their conditional opposition to a proposal from plaintiff writers in California. These plaintiffs, who suing OpenAI for allegations of copyright infringement, are seeking to intervene in a related group of lawsuits in New York, targeting both OpenAI and Microsoft.
Interestingly, although Microsoft is named as a plaintiff in the cases filed in the Southern District of New York, the tech giant remains outside the scope of the California proceedings. The arguments put forth by Microsoft’s legal team, inclusive of representatives from esteemed law firms Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, and Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, further underline this distinction.
The cases in contention in both New York and California revolve around claims of copyright infringement connected with the training of OpenAI’s large language models, a seminal field in which Microsoft is a significant investor.