Newspapers sue Brave over alleged resale of journalism to AI companies

The New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel sued Brave Software in Manhattan federal court on November 2, 2026. The publishers allege that Brave copied their journalism without permission, sold it to AI companies and gave users access to paywalled articles—challenging both the collection of their work and its delivery.

The complaint identifies Anthropic and Perplexity as companies allegedly buying content from Brave. Neither is named as a defendant. The distinction puts Brave’s alleged role as a supplier at the center of this case, even as the publishers accuse other AI businesses of benefiting from the same material.

The suit contains five legal claims, including direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. Those claims reach beyond what Brave itself allegedly copied: the publishers also seek to hold it responsible for its alleged involvement in infringement by others. The accusations are the publishers’ legal position, not court findings.

From collecting articles to supplying AI answers

According to the complaint, Brave crawled and copied content from more than 30 billion webpages in its index without identifying its crawler or giving website owners a way to block it. That figure describes the alleged scope of its web collection, not a count of newspaper articles involved in the case.

The publishers describe two uses for copies allegedly sold to third parties: training AI models and products, and informing answers to users. Their objection therefore covers more than the material used to develop a model. It also concerns journalism supplied to help an AI product respond when someone asks a question.

Separately, the complaint alleges that Brave made unauthorized copies available through its own browser, allowing users to read paywalled content for free. That allegation connects the dispute over acquiring articles to the newspapers’ subscription businesses: the challenged activity includes delivering material for which the publishers charge readers.

One example centers on Ask Brave, the company’s AI feature. The complaint describes a user asking for Daily News articles published that day. It says the response listed the titles of 35 articles behind the newspaper’s paywall, then offered to retrieve complete versions rather than stopping at the list of titles.

would you like me to pull up the full text of any of these articles? If so, just tell me which one(s) and I’ll fetch the complete version.

Ask Brave response quoted in the publishers’ complaint, as reported by the Orlando Sentinel

Publishers challenge Brave’s intermediary role

Steven Lieberman, an attorney representing the Daily News and its sister papers, argued that obtaining journalism through another company does not make the transaction legitimate. He accused Brave of selling AI companies a route around publishers’ restrictions. His statement frames the alleged resale as part of the infringement, rather than an arm’s-length transaction that resolves permission to use the work.

Frank Pine, executive editor at Tribune Publishing and MediaNews Group, also attacked Brave’s Zero Data Retention policy. He alleged that the company attempts to delete evidence of wrongdoing under that policy. This is an accusation by a publishing executive involved in the dispute, not an established finding about Brave’s handling of evidence.

The Daily News said it contacted Brave for comment; its article included no company response. Molly Crane-Newman’s account appeared in both the Daily News and Orlando Sentinel, which are plaintiffs. Those publications provide the account of the complaint and the publishers’ statements, rather than two independent confirmations of the underlying conduct.