Summary
The Copilot litigation is a putative class action brought by anonymous plaintiffs against GitHub, Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging that defendants used plaintiffs copyrighted materials to create Codex and Copilot. Codex is the OpenAI model that powers GitHub’s AI pair programmer, Copilot. Each of the plaintiffs alleged that Copilot does not comply with the OSS licenses governing plaintiffs’ code that was stored on GitHub.
The original causes of action included DMCA violations, breach of contract claims, as well as a variety of torts. While this case is touted as the first class action copyright case against an LLM provider, it has never included any claims of direct or indirect copyright infringement.
What We’re Watching
The district court’s dismissal of DMCA claims is currently on appeal before the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit held oral argument on February 11, 2026. We’re awaiting the Ninth Circuit’s decision.