Rothwell Figg Files Copyright and Trademark Infringement Suit on Behalf of CNN Against Perplexity AI

Rothwell Figg filed a lawsuit on behalf of its client CNN against Perplexity AI in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that Perplexity unlawfully copied and distributed CNN’s copyrighted content to power its generative AI products without authorization or compensation.

CNN brought claims that Perplexity infringed its exclusive rights under the Copyright Act at two stages: by crawling, scraping, and copying CNN’s content, including articles behind CNN’s paywall, to build its search index and provide input to its Large Language Model (LLM); and by generating outputs that are verbatim or substantially similar reproductions of CNN’s works. Further, the claim charges that Perplexity continued its unauthorized use of CNN’s content after negotiations between the parties failed to produce a licensing agreement, despite CNN sending a cease-and-desist letter in December 2025. Perplexity further violated CNN’s trademark rights under the Lanham Act by falsely claiming an affiliation between Perplexity and CNN in order to market its GenAI products.

CNN seeks injunctive relief, statutory and actual damages, treble damages, restitution of profits, and attorneys' fees.

Rothwell Figg also represents a number of media organizations including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, U.S. News, and the Daily News in copyright litigation against AI companies including Perplexity, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

The Rothwell Figg team representing CNN included Steven Lieberman, Jennifer B. Maisel, Sharon Davis, Alexandra Hughes, and Kristen J. Logan.

You can find additional information on the case through the following articles:

• "CNN Files Latest News Copyright Suit Against Perplexity AI," Bloomberg Law.
• "CNN Sues Perplexity, Accusing AI Company of Stealing Its Copyrighted Content," Mediaite.
• "CNN sues AI company Perplexity for doing what AI does," AV Club.
• "CNN sues Perplexity over alleged AI copyright theft," CNN Business.
• "CNN Accuses AI Co. Perplexity Of 'Free Riding' On Reporting," Law360.
• "CNN sues Perplexity over verbatim article copies," Let's Data Science.
• "CNN sues Perplexity over ‘verbatim’ copycat articles," The Verge.
• "Who’s suing AI and who’s signing: CNN latest to sue Perplexity," PressGazette