OpenAI is set to argue in an Ontario courtroom that a copyright lawsuit filed by Canadian news publishers over its ChatGPT system should instead be heard in the United States.
The case was launched by a coalition of Canadian news outlets, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, and CBC/Radio-Canada. The publishers accuse OpenAI of breaching copyright by scraping and using their content to train ChatGPT without consent or compensation.
This is the first lawsuit of its kind in Canada, highlighting concerns about how generative AI systems use copyrighted material for training.
OpenAI’s Jurisdictional Argument
In its filing, OpenAI says the Ontario Superior Court lacks authority to hear the case, emphasizing that the company is headquartered in San Francisco and incorporated in Delaware. The company argues that both the AI training and web scraping occurred outside Canada.
“Canadian copyright law does not apply to extraterritorial conduct,” OpenAI wrote in its submission. It contends that the physical location of publishers or servers in Canada is irrelevant to the alleged activities.
The Canadian media companies argue the case should proceed in Ontario, noting their operations, headquarters, and content creation are primarily based in the province. Their filing stresses that the “vast majority” of their journalistic content originates in Canada and that scraping activity directly affected Canadian outlets.
They warned that accepting OpenAI’s argument would risk ceding Canada’s authority over its digital economy — a scenario they described as “sobering,” particularly given the importance of journalism to national sovereignty.
Legal and Political Overtones
The dispute extends beyond legal technicalities, raising broader questions about digital jurisdiction. While OpenAI accuses the publishers of politicizing the matter with references to sovereignty and press freedom, the plaintiffs maintain that defining jurisdiction solely by physical presence would strip Canada of the ability to regulate its own digital landscape.
The lawsuit mirrors ongoing battles in the United States, where multiple copyright cases against AI firms are underway. Although OpenAI points to the possibility of U.S. courts deciding that training AI models on copyrighted works falls under fair use, the Canadian publishers say the risk of conflicting rulings is overstated.
They argue that Canadian courts can — and should — apply Canadian law independently, regardless of how similar issues are resolved abroad.
Author’s Opinion
This case is about more than copyright; it’s a fight over who gets to set the rules in the digital economy. If Canada defers to U.S. courts, it risks undermining its ability to regulate how its cultural and journalistic content is used in the AI era. For Canadian media already struggling with financial pressures, allowing AI companies to profit from their work without oversight could further destabilize the industry.
Featured image credit: Growtika via Unsplash
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