# New York Times and Publishers Seek Sanctions Against OpenAI for Evidence Withholding

> The copyright fight between news publishers and OpenAI just turned sharper. The New York Times, the Daily News, and other outlets asked a court to sanction OpenAI, alleging the company withheld evidence central to the case. According to the motion, OpenAI claimed it could not search its systems for copyrighted material, then was found to have run exactly those internal searches before the suit was filed, and to have sat on a database of 78 million de-identified conversations. The claims lean on a deposition of an OpenAI data privacy engineer, whose testimony the plaintiffs say contradicts the company's earlier position. The publishers are seeking attorneys' fees and damages, and the fight over discovery could shape how future cases treat what training data labs must disclose. OpenAI denies the allegations. Beyond the legal maneuvering, the dispute raises the stakes for every frontier lab. If courts start compelling detailed disclosure of what went into training sets, the industry's habit of treating that data as an unexaminable trade secret may not survive contact with litigation.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: washingtonpost.com · Published Thursday, July 16, 2026_

## Wortins' read

The copyright fight between news publishers and OpenAI just turned sharper. The New York Times, the Daily News, and other outlets asked a court to sanction OpenAI, alleging the company withheld evidence central to the case. According to the motion, OpenAI claimed it could not search its systems for copyrighted material, then was found to have run exactly those internal searches before the suit was filed, and to have sat on a database of 78 million de-identified conversations. The claims lean on a deposition of an OpenAI data privacy engineer, whose testimony the plaintiffs say contradicts the company's earlier position. The publishers are seeking attorneys' fees and damages, and the fight over discovery could shape how future cases treat what training data labs must disclose. OpenAI denies the allegations. Beyond the legal maneuvering, the dispute raises the stakes for every frontier lab. If courts start compelling detailed disclosure of what went into training sets, the industry's habit of treating that data as an unexaminable trade secret may not survive contact with litigation.

## Source

[Read the full story at washingtonpost.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/07/09/openai-new-york-times-ai-copyright-lawsuit/1f749fa0-7ba4-11f1-b194-f872dd4ec5aa_story.html)

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