The Delhi High Court on July 24 dismissed ANI's application for an interim injunction against OpenAI in its copyright case. In a 135-page judgment, Justice Amit Bansal held at the preliminary stage that storing ANI works for LLM training fell within Section 52(1)(a), and that the cited ChatGPT outputs were not substantially similar or shown to involve memorization or regurgitation. The court accepted jurisdiction, but the underlying suit continues.
The Delhi High Court on July 24 dismissed Asian News International's application for an interim injunction against OpenAI. The 135-page judgment is an important procedural decision in India's first major copyright case over the training and output of a generative AI system, but it does not end the underlying lawsuit.
Justice Amit Bansal held, at the preliminary stage, that OpenAI's storage of ANI's literary works for training the large language models underlying ChatGPT fell within Section 52(1)(a) of India's Copyright Act and therefore did not amount to infringement under Section 51. The judgment also found that the ChatGPT outputs placed before the court were not substantially similar to ANI's works and that ANI had not shown memorization or regurgitation through the cited responses.
What the court decided
The court rejected ANI's request to restrain OpenAI while the case proceeds. It concluded that ANI had not established a prima facie case for an injunction, that the balance of convenience weighed against relief, and that an injunction at this stage would cause irreparable injury to OpenAI and the public at large.
The court also found at the preliminary stage that it had territorial jurisdiction. It reasoned that the alleged training and output claims should not be severed merely because OpenAI stores or processes data on servers outside India, particularly when the challenged output was reproduced within the court's jurisdiction.
What remains unresolved
ANI's suit alleges that OpenAI used its copyrighted news material without permission and that ChatGPT reproduced or falsely attributed content to the agency. OpenAI has argued that training is transformative, that facts are not protected by copyright, and that the outputs cited by ANI do not reproduce protected expression. The July 24 judgment decides the interim-injunction application, not the final merits of those broader claims.
For AI teams operating in India, the judgment is a significant signal rather than a blanket compliance rule. Later proceedings or appeals could further define how Indian courts apply fair dealing to commercial model development, distinguish analysis from protected reproduction, and assess evidence of memorization. Practitioners should read the decision in its procedural context and continue documenting data provenance, opt-out handling, retrieval behavior, and output-evaluation controls.
Key Points #
- 1The Delhi High Court dismissed ANI's request for an interim injunction against OpenAI on July 24, while allowing the underlying copyright suit to continue.
- 2At the preliminary stage, the court found no sufficient showing of substantially similar output or memorization and accepted jurisdiction over the dispute.
- 3The 135-page written judgment is now public, but it decides interim relief rather than finally resolving the broader training and copyright claims.
Scoring Rationale #
The published 135-page judgment materially advances India's first major generative-AI copyright case and addresses training, output similarity, jurisdiction and fair dealing. Its conclusions remain preliminary because the underlying suit continues.
Sources #
Primary source and supporting public references used for this report.
View 5 more sources #
Delhi HC declines interim injunction against OpenAI in ANI copyright suitthehindu.com'Irreparable Injury Would Be Caused To Public At Large': Delhi High Court Rejects ANI's Interim Plea Against OpenAI's ChatGPTlivelaw.inDelhi HC dismisses ANI’s plea against OpenAI on copyright infringementthehindubusinessline.comOpenAI did not violate Indian news agency ANI's copyright, says courtseekingalpha.comDelhi High Court Rules In Favour Of AI Developmentrediff.com
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