Japan's largest paper, Yomiuri Shimbun, sues Perplexity for copyright violations

Summary

The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper by circulation, has sued the generative AI startup Perplexity for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed in Tokyo District Court on August 7, marks the first copyright challenge by a major Japanese news publisher against an AI company. The filing claims that Perplexity accessed 119,467 articles on Yomiuri’s site between February and June of this year, based on an analysis of its company server logs. Yomiuri alleges the scraping has been used by Perplexity to reproduce the newspaper’s copyrighted articles in responses to user queries without authorization. In particular, the suit claims Perplexity has violated its “right of reproduction” and its “right to transmit to the public,” two tenets of Japanese law that give copyright holders control over the copying and distribution of their work. The suit seeks nearly $15 million in damages and demands that Perplexity stop reproducing its articles. The three plaintiffs in the suit are the newspaper’s headquarters in Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka, all of which operate separately under Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings. Japan’s copyright law allows AI developers to train models on copyrighted material without permission. This leeway is a direct result of a 2018 amendment to Japan’s Copyright Act, meant to encourage AI development in the country’s tech sector. The law does not, however, allow for wholesale reproduction of those works, or for AI developers to distribute copies in a way that will “unreasonably prejudice the interests of the copyright owner.” In a statement sent to Yomiuri, a Perplexity spokesperson said, “We are deeply sorry for the misunderstanding this has caused in Japan. We are currently working hard to understand the nature of the claims. We take this very seriously, because Perplexity is committed to ensuring that publishers and journalists benefit from the new business models that will arise in the AI age.” Last fall, two News Corp–owned publishers, The Wall Street Jo...