NYT Sues Brave Over Scraped Journalism
The Times alleges Brave copied its reporting and sold access to AI companies, in a suit filed in federal court in Manhattan.
Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence
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The New York Times sued Brave Software in federal court in Manhattan, accusing it of scraping journalism and selling access to that material to AI companies. A separate lawsuit by the publishers of the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel makes similar allegations.
Why it matters
The cases test whether selling access to a large web index that contains copyrighted news can be done without permission from publishers. The outcome could shape how AI firms license and source training and retrieval data across the United States.
The Brave Index contains more than 30 billion web pages and is sold through its Search API to customers including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. The newspapers' five claims, including copyright infringement and DMCA circumvention, have not been adjudicated.
The players
Brave Software
Brave Software is the company behind the Brave browser and its Brave Search and Search API products, which sell access to a large web index.
The New York Times
The New York Times is a major American newspaper publisher that has pursued several copyright lawsuits against technology companies over the use of its journalism.
The details
The Times says it repeatedly asked Brave to stop using its journalism and that Brave ignored those requests. The newspapers allege Brave's Ask Brave tool returns passages word for word from their articles, and that its Paywall blocker lets users reach subscription content without logging in.
Timeline
March 2025: Brave sued News Corp over web indexing.
July 2025: News Corp countersued Brave, accusing it of theft.
2025: Brave reported more than $100m in revenue.
November 2, 2026: The New York Times and other publishers filed lawsuits against Brave.
Big Picture
The suits extend the copyright and DMCA circumvention theories publishers have used against AI developers to a company that sells web index access to those developers. They follow News Corp's March 2025 suit against Brave over the same indexing practices.
Readers who rely on Brave's browser for ad-free browsing or paywall access may see changes if the lawsuits lead to restrictions on those features. Publishers' ability to control how their articles are reused by AI tools will shape which news sources remain freely available through search.
The takeaway
Publishers are increasingly treating web indexing and AI retrieval as copyright questions rather than neutral technical services. Readers should check whether their browser and search tools respect publisher terms and subscription paywalls.
Further reading
For broader context on how publishers are challenging AI firms, see Artificial Intelligence coverage.
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