Textbook Authors Sue OpenAI and Microsoft, Accusing Them of Training AI on Pirated Textbooks
On 14 August, a group of textbook authors filed a class action lawsuit in New York against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies copied thousands of textbooks without permission to train their large language models — the artificial intelligence systems behind services like ChatGPT. Lead plaintiff Michael Sullivan filed the complaint on behalf of a potential class of all textbook authors similarly situated. Publishing Perspectives
The complaint lays out three core allegations. First, that OpenAI illegally copied massive quantities of textbooks to train its AI. Second, that the company stripped identifying copyright information from those texts to conceal what it had done. Third, that the resulting AI service threatens to displace the market for new and updated editions — the lifeblood of textbook publishing, where revisions every few years keep sales alive.
A class action is a lawsuit brought by one or more people on behalf of a larger group who share the same legal grievance; if the court certifies the class, every affected author can benefit from a single ruling rather than filing individual suits.
The authors also accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of bypassing licensing efforts entirely. Instead of negotiating rights to use copyrighted material, the complaint alleges, the defendants downloaded textbooks from what it calls notorious pirate sites — shadow libraries that distribute books without authors' consent. Publishing Perspectives
The suit asks the court for three things: a formal judgment that copyright infringement occurred, monetary damages, and an injunction — a court order blocking further use of the plaintiffs' works.
This is not the textbook authors' first legal move. In July, the same group filed a similar copyright suit against Meta in California, targeting that company's AI training practices as well. Publishing Perspectives
The lawsuit joins a growing stack of litigation against OpenAI from writers across the publishing landscape. In September 2023, the Authors Guild — the largest professional organisation for working writers in the United States — filed its own class action in federal court in New York on behalf of members including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, George R.R. Martin, David Baldacci and 13 other authors, alleging that OpenAI unlawfully ingested their fiction. The Authors Guild
Other suits followed. Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay filed separately in 2023 The Guardian, as did a group including Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon in San Francisco Reuters and nonfiction authors in November of that year, naming Microsoft alongside OpenAI Reuters.
OpenAI's attempts to dismiss these claims have met with mixed results. On 28 October 2025, a U.S. federal judge denied OpenAI's motion to dismiss part of the consolidated authors' copyright case — the combined lawsuit that now includes writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Grisham and Martin — allowing those claims to proceed toward trial. Reuters
The textbook case is distinct from the fiction suits in one important way. Textbook authors depend on recurring edition sales — a professor assigns the 12th edition, students buy it, the author earns royalties, and three years later a 13th edition arrives. If an AI can summarise the content of a current textbook on demand, the argument goes, that market could erode before the next revision reaches a campus bookshop.
Neither OpenAI nor Microsoft has publicly responded to the 14 August complaint. The case now sits before a federal court in New York, where the authors will seek class certification and the defendants will have an opportunity to respond.
