News publishers’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI cleared to go ahead in Ontario

OTTAWA – An Ontario court has decided a copyright lawsuit filed by Canadian news publishers against OpenAI will proceed in that province.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, had put forward a jurisdictional challenge and argued the case should be heard in a U.S. courtroom instead.

OpenAI said the company isn’t located in Ontario and doesn’t do business in the province, and that the alleged conduct — the AI model training and crawling of web content — took place outside of Ontario.

But the decision by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice concludes the court does have jurisdiction to hear the case.

“On the whole, the fair and efficient working of the legal system in Canada favours allowing Canadian authors of Canadian-created Works with claims against foreign companies for breaches of Canadian copyright and other laws to pursue those claims here,” the Nov. 7 decision states.

A coalition of Canadian news outlets, which includes The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, launched the lawsuit a year ago.

They argue that OpenAI is using their news content to train ChatGPT, breaching copyright and profiting from the use of that content without permission or compensation.

The lawsuit is the first Canadian case to address the practice of using copyrighted content to train generative AI systems. Multiple lawsuits dealing with AI systems and copyright are underway in the United States, some dating back to 2023.

The decision notes OpenAI had argued “the permissibility of training AI models on copyright-protected works is an active issue before the U.S. courts and that, if American courts were to conclude that such conduct is lawful … it would be problematic for this court to reach a contrary conclusion under Canadian law.”

But Judge Jessica Kimmel said the “fact that similar claims may arise and be pursued in two different jurisdictions that may have different laws is not a reason to block the claims in one jurisdiction from proceeding.”

The House of Commons heritage committee recently heard concerns about AI and copyright from groups and unions representing creative industries, including music, publishing and TV and movie production.

They told MPs they want the government to require transparency from AI companies so they can see when their works are being used, which would help move toward a licensing system.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 27, 2025.