AI training gets a ‘fair dealing’ boost in India — with a Canadian as…
By ai_poster · 8/13/2026, 12:48:52 AM
The Delhi High Court ruled in *ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. Open AI OPCO LLC* that temporary storage of copyrighted content for AI training may qualify as fair dealing, but outputs must be evaluated separately for infringement. The Court declined to grant an interim injunction over the training and outputs of the large language models underlying ChatGPT. Its prima facie conclusion was that temporary storage of news articles for training may qualify as fair dealing for private or personal use, including research, while outputs must be assessed separately for substantial reproduction. On the jurisdictional question, the Court agreed the proceeding could continue in Delhi because ANI is based there, OpenAI actively serves Indian users, and relevant prompts and outputs occur within the Court’s territorial jurisdiction. On the merits, the Court found that training-time storage of copyrighted works may fall within the “fair dealing” section of India’s Copyright Act, 1957 and that the challenged outputs were not substantially similar to ANI’s articles. The Court relied upon the Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions in *CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada* and *Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v. Bell Canada*, concluding that research should be interpreted broadly. It rejected the proposition that a commercial interest in the dealing alone defeats fair dealing as a user’s right. ANI had not demonstrated a loss of subscribers or advertising revenue. The ruling is only a preliminary injunction, leaving several legal questions open for future trials.
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