Tremblay v. OpenAI, Inc., No. 3:23-cv-03223 (N.D. Cal.), is a putative class action brought by book authors against OpenAI alleging that its models were trained on their copyrighted books without licence. Filed on June 28, 2023 by novelists Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad, it became the lead vehicle for the author claims against OpenAI in the Northern District of California, absorbing the separately filed Silverman and Kadrey actions. On April 21, 2025 the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred it to the Southern District of New York under 28 U.S.C. § 1407, where it was reopened as 1:25-cv-03482 and folded into MDL 1:25-md-03143, In re: OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation (Source: courtlistener.com).
Infobox
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Original case number | 3:23-cv-03223 (N.D. Cal.), also docketed 4:23-cv-03223 |
| Filed | June 28, 2023 |
| Original plaintiffs | Paul Tremblay, Mona Awad |
| Later named plaintiffs | Sarah Silverman, Richard Kadrey, Christopher Golden, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Junot Díaz, Andrew Sean Greer, David Henry Hwang, Matthew Klam, Laura Lippman, Rachel Louise Snyder, Jacqueline Woodson |
| Defendants | OpenAI, Inc. and six affiliated OpenAI entities; Microsoft Corporation |
| Original judge | Araceli Martínez-Olguín (N.D. Cal.) |
| Transferred | April 21, 2025, by JPML order under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 |
| New case number | 1:25-cv-03482 (S.D.N.Y.), opened April 28, 2025 |
| Consolidated into | MDL 1:25-md-03143, In re: OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation |
Claims
The complaint alleges that OpenAI trained GPT-series models on the plaintiffs' books, obtained from sources the plaintiffs characterise as unlicensed, and that the models can produce accurate summaries of those books as evidence that the works were ingested. The theories advanced included direct copyright infringement, vicarious infringement, DMCA § 1202(b) removal of copyright-management information, and state-law unfair-competition and unjust-enrichment claims. Microsoft was named as a defendant alongside the OpenAI entities.
Procedural history
The case was filed in the Northern District of California on June 28, 2023 with a jury demand. Sarah Silverman, Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden filed a closely related action shortly afterwards, and the author claims were administratively brought together before Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, producing the consolidated plaintiff list above. As with the parallel author litigation against other developers, the court narrowed the pleadings, and the case proceeded into discovery, motions to compel, and disputes over leave to file a second amended complaint through early 2025.
On April 8, 2025 the court vacated a scheduled April 17 hearing in light of the impending transfer. The JPML transfer order issued April 21, 2025, and the case opened in the Southern District of New York on April 28, 2025 as 1:25-cv-03482 (Source: courtlistener.com). Subsequent substantive activity — including the January 2026 order compelling production of 20 million anonymised ChatGPT logs — has proceeded within the consolidated MDL rather than on the original docket (NYT v. Microsoft, OpenAI et al.).
Current status
Consolidated and pending in the S.D.N.Y. multidistrict litigation. No merits ruling on fair use has issued in the author track. The case's significance is structural as much as doctrinal: it is the point at which the scattered 2023 author suits against OpenAI became a single coordinated proceeding, which is the posture in which the fair-use question against OpenAI is now being litigated.
Relationships
- instance-of: AI Copyright — training-data infringement theory applied to books
- related: AI Copyright Litigation — Analysis — the wider copyright docket
- related: NYT v. Microsoft, OpenAI et al. — the news-organization track of the same MDL
- related: Kadrey v. Meta — the parallel author action against Meta, which produced the first substantive fair-use ruling
- related: Bartz v. Anthropic — the parallel author action against Anthropic, which settled
- related: Andersen v. Stability AI, Getty Images v. Stability AI (US) — the other two first-wave 2023 filings