The New York Times and other newspaper companies sued Brave Software, alleging the browser maker illegally bypasses paywals and sells stolen news content to AI companies. The suit names Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere as recipients of content from Brave's search index.
The lawsuit claims Brave has earned more than $100 million by copying and reselling publishers' work without consent. "Brave is the supplier, dealer, and distributor of stolen copyrighted content for its own users and many of the most prominent GenAI companies," the NYT alleged in the filing to US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Brave's paywall blocker feature, enabled by default, bypasses the Times' paywalls to provide article access to users. The browser also blocks the Times' advertising and replaces it with its own ads while offering users a cut of revenue. The lawsuit accuses Brave of direct copyright infringement, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Brave's website states its Search API is "used by some of the biggest names in AI, including Cohere, Mistral, Perplexity, and You.com." The lawsuit says AI companies pay Brave to provide real-time online content from the Brave search index to train models and respond to user queries.
The NYT seeks a permanent injunction and statutory damages, actual damages, and disgorgement of all revenue and profits obtained through the alleged copyright infringement and ad-substitution scheme. A similar lawsuit was filed the same day by the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel companies.
Perplexity, facing a separate NYT lawsuit filed in December 2025, accused the news organization of publishing "disinformation" in a statement but did not identify specific inaccuracies.