USA Today Sues OpenAI: $250M+ Damages Sought, "Hundreds of Thousands" of Articles Allegedly Taken for Training

What Happened

Case USA Today Co v. OpenAI Foundation, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:26-cv-08892. The plaintiff is USA Today Co (NYSE: TDAY, owner of USA Today and several local newspapers), suing together with several of its papers. The complaint alleges OpenAI copied "hundreds of thousands" of the papers' news articles and other materials without permission to train the large models behind ChatGPT. It seeks damages "in excess of $250 million," plus a court order blocking OpenAI's alleged infringement. USA Today's counsel is Steven Lieberman of Rothwell Figg Ernst & Manbeck. As of Reuters' filing, an OpenAI spokesperson had not immediately responded to a request for comment, and OpenAI's attorney-information field was still blank.

Reuters said it is one of "dozens of high-stakes lawsuits" by copyright owners against tech companies, with defendants including OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta. OpenAI and its biggest backer Microsoft are also defendants in the same Manhattan court, sued by The New York Times and a group of prominent authors in December 2023, a case still ongoing. The companies' defense is that training is "transformative use," covered by fair use. The plaintiffs argue the products reproduce their articles verbatim, sometimes with the wrong byline.

Key Facts

1. $250M is the plaintiff's claim: The complaint says "in excess of $250 million" — that's the plaintiff's ask, not a judgment. For reference: in August 2025, Anthropic settled the Bartz v. Anthropic author class action for $1.5 billion — authors alleged it downloaded books from pirate libraries to train Claude, the largest US copyright settlement in history.
2. Parent company has licensed to Perplexity: Per Press Gazette's publisher tracker, USA Today's parent Gannett has already signed a content-licensing deal with Perplexity.
3. Fair use remains unresolved: Every case argues the same question — is training large models fair use? The California Anthropic settlement this summer established that training on pirated libraries is not legal; the NYT v. OpenAI case has been in procedure in the same court for nearly three years. The DOJ filed a statement of interest backing the tech side; Altman proposed a 5% OpenAI stake for the government this summer.
4. OpenAI has not responded: Reuters reported that an OpenAI spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In April 2024, when eight Alden papers sued, OpenAI responded that "we take great care in our products and design process to support news organizations."

Context

The timeline: December 2023 — the NYT sues OpenAI and Microsoft in the same court; April 2024 — eight Alden Global papers (NY Daily News, Chicago Tribune and others) sue; then The Intercept, Raw Story, AlterNet, Mumsnet, Ziff Davis, Editorial Perfil, Wikihow, Seattle Times/Newsday join as plaintiffs; meanwhile, AP, FT, Axel Springer, Le Monde, Guardian and the Washington Post sign licensing deals with OpenAI, NYT with Amazon, News Corp with Meta, Gannett with Perplexity; August 2025 — Anthropic's $1.5B settlement of the author class action, a US copyright-settlement record; May 2026 — the fairness hearing concluded, with final approval not yet issued. USA Today Co is a listed company (NYSE: TDAY).