ANI vs OpenAI: Delhi High Court refuses immediate stay on copyright ruling

The Delhi High Court Tuesday refused to grant interim relief to news agency ANI, which had sought a stay on a ruling that held that using copyrighted works to train large language models (LLMs) does not amount to copyright infringement.

The news agency had appealed against the July verdict by a single judge, which opened the doors for developers of artificial intelligence (AI), such as OpenAI, to continue training on Indian-origin content without licensing agreements.

A division bench of Justices Avneesh Jhingan and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, which took up the appeal briefly on Tuesday, orally suggested that the court “would not like to pass anything ex-parte without the other side”.

It sought OpenAI’s response, and will hear the matter next on December 8. ANI filed its suit in 2024 against OpenAI Inc and OpenAI OpCo LLC — a first of its kind in the Indian jurisdiction — seeking an injunction against the use of its copyrighted content in the training of LLMs.

The single judge had refused any interim injunction for the time being, even as the suit remains to be adjudicated. Taking a broad view of “fair use” of copyrighted works, the single judge had held that using ANI’s original literary works to train LLMs would amount to “private” use, including research, and qualify as fair use.

Also Read | OpenAI will not go public in 2026, says Sam Altman amid AI safety concerns Weighing in on the potential commercial loss that the news agency stands to face, the single judge had ruled that it “would not result in market substitution of ANI’s works and, consequently, will not affect its market share or cause actual or potential damage…” Before it moved court, ANI had offered OpenAI a licence to all its digital media video, imagery, photographic and/or news content that is owned or within the control of ANI for a fee of USD 7.5 million.

In its suit, ANI had also opposed the verbatim replication of its copyrighted material when a query was put in ChatGPT; and hallucinatory responses from ChatGPT, which it falsely attributed to ANI. In its appeal, ANI argued that fair dealing under the Copyright Act is a closed, purpose-specific exception, and commercial exploitation of copyrighted work at scale cannot be read into “private or personal use, including research”.

It argued that the single judge’s reasoning on fair use of copyrighted material effectively imports the wider American fair use doctrine into a statute that does not contain it. Also Read | OpenAI pushes for mandatory national AI safety rules ANI, through its lawyer Sidhant Kumar Marwah, argued that public interest and the growth of AI cannot displace statutory rights, and that the Delhi HC ruling also ignores OpenAI’s own policy of providing an option to website owners to opt-out of scraping for training of LLMs.

According to OpenAI, following the pre-training phase, its models do not have access to the original training data after a cut-off date. OpenAI also told the court in November 2024 that it had already “blocklisted” ANI’s domain, which meant that it was excluded from future training of OpenAI’s software.

Sohini Ghosh is a Senior Correspondent at The Indian Express. Previously based in Ahmedabad covering Gujarat, she recently moved to the New Delhi bureau, where she primarily covers legal developments at the Delhi High Court Professional Profile Background: An alumna of the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), she previously worked with ET NOW before joining The Indian Express.

Core Beats: Her reporting is currently centered on the Delhi High Court, with a focus on high-profile constitutional disputes, disputes over intellectual property, criminal and civil cases, issues of human rights and regulatory law (especially in the areas of technology and healthcare).

Earlier Specialty: In Gujarat, she was known for her rigorous coverage in the beats of crime, law and policy, and social justice issues, including the 2002 riot cases, 2008 serial bomb blast case, 2016 flogging of Dalits in Una, among others.

She has extensively covered health in the state, including being part of the team that revealed the segregation of wards at the state’s largest government hospital on lines of faith in April 2020. With Ahmedabad being a UNESCO heritage city, she has widely covered urban development and heritage issues, including the redevelopment of the Sabarmati Ashram Recent Notable Articles (Late 2025) Her recent reporting from the Delhi High Court covers major political, constitutional, corporate, and public-interest legal battles: High-Profile Case Coverage She has extensively covered the various legal battles - including for compensation under the aegis of North East Delhi Riots Claims Commission - pertaining to the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, as well as 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

She has also led coverage at the intersection of technology and governance, and its impact on the citizenry, from, and beyond courtrooms — such as the government’s stakeholder consultations for framing AI-Deepfake policy.

Signature Style Sohini is recognized for her sustained reporting from courtrooms and beyond. She specialises in breaking down dense legal arguments to make legalese accessible for readers. Her transition from Gujarat to Delhi has seen her expand her coverage on regulatory, corporate and intellectual property law, while maintaining a strong commitment to human rights and lacuna in the criminal justice system.

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