Apple Intelligence: AI Copyright Litigation

Case Status

The Hendrix complaint was filed on September 5, 2025, and was later consolidated with Martinez-Conde v. Apple Inc., No. 4:25-cv-08695, and Alexander v. Apple, Inc., No. 4:25-cv-09090, with all future filings to proceed on the Hendrix lead docket.

On January 30, 2026, the Court appointed interim Co-Lead Counsel for Plaintiffs: William K. Dreher of Keller Rohrback L.L.P. and Rohit Nath of Susman Godfrey L.L.P. Plaintiffs filed a Consolidated Class Action Complaint on February 13, 2026, and Apple answered on March 30, 2026. The case has since moved into discovery, which Judge Gonzalez Rogers has referred to United States Magistrate Judge Ajay S. Krishnan.

On November 2, 2026, Plaintiffs filed a First Amended Consolidated Class Action Complaint.

Under the Court's current schedule, fact discovery is set to close on April 30, 2027, and a hearing on dispositive motions is set for December 3, 2027. The Court has not yet set a date for the trial of this matter. Plaintiffs have demanded a jury trial.

You may review the First Amended Consolidated Class Action Complaint and other filings in the Case Documents section below. We invite you to check this website periodically as it will be updated as the litigation progresses.

Case Overview

Plaintiffs allege that Apple Inc. built key parts of its "Apple Intelligence" artificial intelligence system by copying authors' copyrighted books without permission or payment. Plaintiffs claim Apple trained two sets of large language models using Books3 (a dataset made up of pirated copies of copyrighted books): its OpenELM models, and its Foundation Language Models, which is the technology behind Apple Intelligence. Plaintiffs further allege that Apple obtained copyrighted works through online "shadow libraries" such as Library Genesis, by using its Applebot web crawler to scrape content from the internet, and, more recently, by purchasing and scanning physical books. Plaintiffs contend that Apple did not delete these materials after training, but instead kept them in private, permanent data libraries for ongoing and future AI development, even as a licensing market for AI training data has developed and grown.

Plaintiffs allege that this type of conduct harms authors and the markets for their work by depriving them of licensing revenue Apple never paid, and by flooding the market with AI-generated material that competes with and dilutes demand for human-written books. Plaintiffs seek to represent a nationwide class of copyright owners whose registered works Apple allegedly used in developing its AI models. The complaint asserts direct copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 501, alleges that Apple's infringement was willful, and asks the Court to certify the case as a class action. Plaintiffs ask for an award of statutory and compensatory damages, restitution and disgorgement, attorneys' fees and costs, a permanent injunction against the challenged conduct, and the destruction, under 17 U.S.C. § 503(b), of infringing models and of the copies of class members' works held in Apple's private libraries.

11/02/2026

First Amended Consolidated Class Action Complaint (filed under seal)

01/30/2026

Order Appointing Interim Co-Lead Counsel

Apple Intelligence: AI Copyright Litigation

Case Status

Case Overview

Case Documents

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