New York Times, Chicago Tribune sue Brave web browser over copyrights

The New York Times sued Brave, the 11-year-old, privacy-focused browser company, on Monday, alleging it scraped the outlet's copyrighted content and unlawfully distributed it to customers by passing its paywall.

The suit names as Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere.

Separately on Monday, the Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel filed a similar lawsuit.

Both were brought in federal court in Manhattan.

The newspapers said in the complaints ​that Brave illegally sells their content to AI companies including ​Anthropic, Perplexity and xAI — which are not defendants in the ⁠cases — in addition to infringing their copyrights by allowing users to ​access their articles for free.

"The New York Times is overpaying its ​attorneys and underpaying its journalists. (Who could've easily identified the disinformation in this suit.)," a Perplexity spokesperson said in response.

Spokespeople for Brave, Anthropic and xAI did not immediately ​respond to requests for comment on the complaints.

"While we believe in ​the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, Brave has flouted established copyright ‌law ⁠and ignored repeated requests by The Times to stop its infringing conduct," New York Times spokesperson Graham James said in a statement.

The outlets' lawsuits ​filed on ⁠Monday said that Brave "acts both like a burglar that misappropriates the content of publishers, and an AI 'fence' that ​sells stolen content to third parties".