Meta won a big copyright battle Wednesday. A federal judge ruled the company did not break the law by training its AI tools on 13 authors’ books without permission.
The lawsuit came from authors including comedian Sarah Silverman. They argued Meta infringed their copyrights by using their books to train large language models. The case, Kadrey v. Meta, was one of the first of its kind.
US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria granted summary judgment to Meta. He said the plaintiffs failed to prove harm from Meta’s use of their work. 
Judge Chhabria emphasized the key question: whether copying the works hurt their market value.
“The Court has no choice but to grant summary judgment to Meta on the plaintiffs’ claim that the company violated copyright law by training its models with their books,” wrote Judge Chhabria.
“The key question in virtually any case where a defendant has copied someone’s original work without permission is whether allowing people to engage in that sort of conduct would substantially diminish the market for the original.”
This decision follows another major AI copyright win Monday. Judge William Alsup ruled in favor of Anthropic’s use of copyrighted material for training.
Chhabria noted his ruling was limited to this case. It does not clear Meta to use copyrighted material freely in future AI training or affect other authors.
“In the grand scheme of things, the consequences of this ruling are limited. This is not a class action, so the ruling only affects the rights of these 13 authors—not the countless others whose works Meta used to train its models,” Chhabria wrote.
“And, as should now be clear, this ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful.”
This case marks another key moment in the growing wave of AI copyright legal battles. More lawsuits are likely as the industry grapples with how training data is sourced.
