New York Times and other publishers sue Brave Software over AI scraping and paywall bypassing

The New York Times and a group of other publishers, including the owners of the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel, have filed copyright lawsuits against Brave Software. They allege Brave scraped their sites without permission, sold paid access to its search index to AI companies (reportedly Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere), and let users get past paywalls through its "Paywall blocker" feature. The publishers also say the Times' repeated requests to stop were ignored. These are allegations in a complaint, not court findings. The coverage is secondary (via Reuters and The Verge), and we have not seen the filing itself, so the court, damages sought and exact claims are unconfirmed.

The case targets a less-examined link in the AI supply chain: search index providers who sell data to model builders. If a court accepts that selling scraped content access to AI firms is infringement, AI companies buying such feeds could face questions about where their data came from. Brave's competitors, publishers negotiating licences and any firm relying on third-party search APIs are the most affected. The paywall-blocker claim is a separate and more conventional dispute, so the two parts could end differently. Any practical effect is a long way off, because copyright cases of this kind usually take years.

Claims of "stealing" and of wide supply to named AI firms are the publishers' framing and are unproven. The AI companies named appear as alleged customers, not defendants, and nothing here shows they did anything wrong. The headline's "regulatory action" is also loose: this is private civil litigation, not a regulator's decision.

1. 01The complaint itself: the court, the specific legal claims (copyright, circumvention of paywalls), and any damages or injunction sought, to check the Reuters-based account.
2. 02Brave's formal response and any motion to dismiss, plus whether the named AI companies (Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, Cohere) comment, are subpoenaed or are added as defendants.
3. 03Early rulings in the coming months, and whether Brave changes or withdraws the Paywall blocker or restricts Brave Index API access, which would show how seriously it takes the risk.