Microsoft Joinder Backs OpenAI Motion to Consolidate 2 Newspaper Infringement Cases

Microsoft supports OpenAI’s motion to consolidate the copyright infringement case brought by The New York Times with the related case brought by eight local newspapers (see 2406140041), said Microsoft’s joinder Friday (dockets 1:23-cv-11195 and 1:24-cv-03285) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. “In the interests of fundamental fairness and judicial economy,” Microsoft joins OpenAI’s consolidation request “but only so long as these matters proceed on a separate, and later schedule than that which the parties’ stipulated” in the consolidated authors’ cases, it said. The two cases should be consolidated because both “involve nearly identical allegations relating to the same new technology,” but that technology’s not at issue in the consolidated authors’ class actions, it said. Any consolidation between the two newspaper cases must also involve setting a new schedule that follows behind that of the consolidated authors’ class actions, it said. This is so because the different technology at issue in the newspaper cases “implicates additional, broader fact and expert discovery work that simply cannot be completed on the timeline presently set” in the consolidated authors’ class actions, it said.