New York Times sues Brave Software over search index supplied to AI firms

The New York Times sued Brave Software in the Southern District of New York on 2 November 2026, case No. 26-cv-9549. The complaint says Brave copied Times journalism into a search index of more than 30 billion webpages and supplies it to AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere. It alleges Brave made more than $100 million by copying and reselling publishers' work without consent, and that publishers received nothing. Brave is the only defendant. The AI companies are not parties to the suit.

What the Times alleges

The Times brings five counts: direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement; violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 1201 anti-circumvention rules; and unjust enrichment under New York law. It asks for statutory and actual damages, restitution of profits, a permanent injunction, costs and attorneys' fees, and a jury trial. The prayer for relief states no dollar amount.

The complaint names three Brave products. Ask Brave is the AI answer feature in Brave Search. The Brave Search API provides copies of content from the Brave Index for training models and grounding answers. The Brave Browser includes a paywall blocker and the Leo assistant. The complaint says Ask Brave answers often include verbatim text from copyrighted material and detailed summaries of it. It says the browser blocks ads on Times pages and shows Brave's own ads instead. The unjust enrichment count does not depend on copying, the complaint says, and rests on Brave's replacement of Times advertising.

Anthropic and Brave's own claims

The complaint lists Anthropic among the AI companies that get content through the Brave Search API. It quotes a 2023 Brave blog post saying Anthropic used the API to train Claude 2. It cites Brave's description that the API's most common uses are training and grounding several of the Web's biggest large language models. It says Brave Search answers more than 50 million queries a day and a third of those lead to an AI generated response. The API handles billions of API calls weekly, according to the complaint. Third-party reports put Brave's 2025 revenue above $100 million, up from about $52 million in 2024, the complaint says.

Letters and related suits

The Times wrote to Brave chief executive Brendan Eich on 11 August 2025 and again on 13 April 2026. The second letter said the conduct warranted enhanced statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement. The complaint alleges Brave ignored both letters. The Times previously sued Microsoft and OpenAI in December 2023 and Perplexity in December 2025, according to its latest quarterly filing. On the same day as the Times suit, Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel filed their own complaint against Brave, No. 1:26-cv-09554, with the same five counts and the same relief. Both suits were filed by Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck, with Steven Lieberman signing each.