On July 24, 2026, the Delhi High Court (‘Delhi HC’) declined to grant an interim injunction against OpenAI OPCO LLC (‘OpenAI’) in the case of ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI OPCO LLC^[1], which is one of India’s first substantive judicial examinations of the application of copyright law to generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) training and outputs.

ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. (‘ANI’) alleged infringement on two grounds: (i) OpenAI’s unlicensed use of its copyrighted news content to train ChatGPT’s underlying large language models (LLMs); and (ii) ChatGPT’s reproduction of ANI’s work in user-facing responses. OpenAI has contested the Delhi HC’s jurisdiction over the matter, arguing that its servers are located in the United States. The Delhi HC addressed the key issues as set out below.

i.     Jurisdiction: the Delhi HC rejected the objections raised by OpenAI with respect to the jurisdiction of the Court, holding that server location abroad does not oust Indian courts given that ANI’s principal places of business are located in India and the AI service reaches Indian users.

ii.   Training: The Court held that while storage of copyrighted works for LLM training engages the reproduction right, it prima facie qualifies as ‘fair dealing’, articulating a two-step enquiry – a ‘Purpose Test’ (whether the use falls within private use, including research) and a ‘Fairness Test’ (assessed against scope of use, market impact, and public interest) – finding that both were satisfied.  Notably, the Court held that the commercial nature of OpenAI’s platform did not, by itself, defeat the defence.

iii.  Reproduction of Works: The Delhi HC found no prima facie evidence of memorisation or substantial reproduction of ANI’s protected expression, distinguishing factual overlap inherent to news reporting from actionable infringement.

iv.   Public Interest:  On balance, the Court found that convenience and public interest weighed against the grant of an injunction, particularly given that ANI’s claim is monetarily quantifiable and that ANI had the ability to block OpenAI’s web crawlers but had not exercised the available technical opt-out mechanisms.

It is pertinent to note that this is an interim Order based on prima facie observations. The final outcome on each of the issues listed above will be subject to detailed examination as the trial progresses.

[1] ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI OPCO LLC, 2026 SCC OnLine Del 5291