Rothwell Figg Reaches Six AI Copyright Suits with New Filings Against Perplexity AI on Behalf of The New York Times and Chicago Tribune

12.5.25

On behalf of The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune Company, Rothwell Figg has filed two new lawsuits in the Southern District of New York against Perplexity AI, an artificial intelligence-powered search engine. These filings bring the firm’s total to six lawsuits against AI companies accused of infringing the copyrights of major news organizations. Prior actions include a lawsuit filed on November 26 on behalf of U.S. News and World Report against OpenAI as well as cases filed against Microsoft and OpenAI on behalf of The New York Times, a group of eight prominent newspapers, and nine nationwide news outlets.

In 2024, The New York Times sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity instructing the company to stop accessing and using its content in its generative AI product. Perplexity continued doing so, and The New York Times filed suit on December 5, alleging the “unlawful copying and distribution of The Times’s copyrighted content” despite The New York Times’ “express and repeat objections.” Through these actions, “Perplexity has violated the protections that intellectual property law provides for The Times’s expressive, original journalism, which includes everything from news to opinion, culture to business, cooking to games, and shopping recommendations to sports.” Perplexity “violates The Times’s exclusive rights under the Copyright Act at two principal stages” including the unlawful scraping of content and producing output that is either identical to or extremely similar to the content of The New York Times. The complaint also addresses Perplexity’s violations of The Times’ trademarks under the Lanham Act. Because “The Times depends on its exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution, adaption, publication, performance, and display under copyright law to operate,” the protection of its “intellectual property is critical to its continued ability to fund world-class journalism that serves the public interest.”

The complaint filed on behalf of the Chicago Tribune on December 4 makes similar allegations, citing “massive copyright infringement” as well as violation of “the Chicago Tribune’s trademark under the Lanham Act.” According to the complaint, “if the Chicago Tribune and its peers cannot control the use of their content, their ability to monetize that content will be harmed.” Perplexity, said to be worth $20 billion, is “misappropriating substantial subscription, advertising, licensing, and affiliate revenue opportunities that belong rightfully and exclusively to the Chicago Tribune.”

As more and more newspapers all over the country collapse, authentic, high-quality journalism is becoming harder to find. And if The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, “and other news organizations cannot produce and protect their original journalism – especially original reporting – there will be a vacuum that no computer or AI can fill.”

The Rothwell Figg team representing The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune includes Steven Lieberman, Jennifer Maisel, Robert Parker, Jenny Colgate, Kristen Logan, Bryan Thompson, and Alexandra Hughes.

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