New York Times Sues Brave Browser Over AI Content Scraping
The New York Times sues Brave Software, accusing the company behind the Brave web browser of illegally copying its articles and supplying the content to artificial intelligence companies. The New York Times and several other major newspapers filed lawsuits on Monday, November 2, in a federal court in Manhattan.
The lawsuits were filed by The New York Times, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel. The publishers claim Brave collected their copyrighted content without permission and made money by providing it to AI companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity and xAI. TechCrunch reported that the complaints also name Mistral and Cohere among the AI firms said to have received access.
The complaints centre on Brave’s search index. The publishers allege Brave built an index of more than 30 billion web pages using an unidentified crawler that site operators cannot detect or block. They say Brave then sold paid access to real-time online content from that index to AI developers, for training models and for answering user queries.
The publishers also accuse Brave of helping users bypass newspaper paywalls. They say a browser setting described in the filings as a “Paywall blocker” allows readers to access paid articles without a login or subscription. The complaints add that Brave blocks publishers’ advertisements while displaying or selling its own advertising services.
New York Times sues Brave: why the case matters
The New York Times said it had repeatedly asked Brave to stop using its copyrighted material without permission. The newspaper wrote to Brave chief executive Brendan Eich on August 11, 2025, and again on April 13, 2026, repeating its demand. The second letter argued that the alleged infringement was willful and warned of enhanced statutory damages of up to 150,000 dollars per infringement.
New York Times spokesperson Graham James said the company supports responsible AI development but believes Brave has violated copyright laws. Perplexity, one of the AI companies named in the complaints, rejected the allegations. Its chief communications officer Jesse Dwyer dismissed the suit, saying the Times was “overpaying its attorneys and underpaying its journalists”. Brave, Anthropic and xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The complaints bring five counts: direct copyright infringement, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, circumvention of technological access controls under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and unjust enrichment under New York law. The publishers seek damages and court orders to stop the alleged violations.
The case is part of a wider legal dispute between news publishers and AI companies. The New York Times has already filed separate copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft over the alleged use of its articles to train AI models. Publishers argue that technology companies should obtain permission and pay for copyrighted news content used in commercial AI products. The companies involved dispute those claims, including through arguments about how copyright law applies to AI development.
What the case could decide
The lawsuits could help clarify how existing copyright rules apply to AI search engines, web scraping and tools that allow users to access subscription-based content. At issue is whether building a commercial index from publishers’ work, and selling access to it, counts as infringement, or whether it falls within the bounds of fair use and normal search practice.
For now, Brave faces allegations only. No court has determined that the company violated the law in these cases, and the AI companies named as customers are not defendants in the lawsuits.
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Frequently asked questions
Who sued Brave?
The New York Times filed one lawsuit, and the publishers of the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed a second, separate lawsuit. Both were filed on November 2, 2026, in federal court in Manhattan.
What is Brave accused of?
The publishers accuse Brave of copying their articles into a search index of more than 30 billion web pages without permission, selling access to that content to AI companies, and offering a “Paywall blocker” that lets readers bypass subscription paywalls.
Are the AI companies defendants?
No. Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere are named as companies that allegedly received access to the content, but none is a defendant in either lawsuit.
What have the companies said so far?
Perplexity rejected the allegations. Brave, Anthropic and xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The New York Times says it wrote to Brave twice, in August 2025 and April 2026, before suing.
What happens next?
The allegations will now be examined through the legal process. The publishers seek damages and court orders to stop the alleged copyright violations, but no court has ruled on the claims yet.
