On Monday, the New York Times sued Brave Software in federal court in Manhattan, accusing the privacy-focused browser company of copying its copyrighted reporting and distributing it to AI companies. The Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed a separate but similar case the same day.¹

The Times casts the case as an extension of its broader fight over how AI companies obtain news content. Its complaint says Brave built an index of more than 30 billion web pages using an unidentified crawler, making it difficult for publishers to block access. It names Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere as customers allegedly supplied with the material.¹

The other publishers’ complaint advances the same central theory: that Brave monetized access to its “real-time online content” index, which AI companies could use to train models, answer particular user queries, or both.² In the Times’ formulation, Brave is not merely an intermediary: “Brave acts both like a burglar that misappropriates the content of publishers, and an AI ‘fence’ that sells stolen content to third parties.”¹

The suits also target Brave’s browser tools. Publishers say its promoted paywall-blocking feature lets users reach hundreds of outlets without consent, while ad-blocking limits publishers’ revenue and Brave sells its own advertising. “Brave has never asked for the Publishers’ permission” to access, copy or distribute their work, the complaint says.²

For the Times, the dispute is about more than technology policy. Spokesperson Graham James said the company supports responsible AI development, but accused Brave of flouting copyright law and ignoring repeated requests to stop.² The Times is seeking an injunction and damages. Brave did not immediately respond to requests for comment.¹