Ontario's Court of Appeal has dismissed OpenAI's appeal, clearing Canada's largest news publishers to press ahead with their copyright lawsuit over the use of their journalism to train ChatGPT. The ruling, released on Friday, November 13, keeps the case in Ontario — and makes it the first Canadian case to test whether copyrighted news content can be used to train generative AI systems.
The lawsuit was filed in Toronto in November 2024 by Torstar, Metroland Media, Postmedia Network, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC/Radio-Canada. The publishers allege OpenAI collected and reproduced their journalistic work without permission, fed it into datasets used to train its GPT models, and profited from the resulting systems. They are seeking damages, disgorgement of profits, punitive damages and a permanent injunction — or, alternatively, statutory damages of C$20,000 per work infringed.
A two-year fight over where the case belongs
OpenAI, based in California, argued the alleged infringements fell outside the reach of Canadian law and that the dispute belonged in a United States courtroom. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice rejected that argument in November 2025, when Justice Jessica Kimmel ruled Ontario had jurisdiction to hear the case.
Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Justice B.W. Miller upheld that ruling, finding that Ontario has a real and substantial connection to the alleged breaches. The court also noted OpenAI had filed no evidence showing that a judgment in Canada would conflict with existing United States laws. OpenAI was ordered to pay C$100,000 in legal costs to the publisher group.
What the ruling does — and does not — decide
The appeal decision settles only where the case will be heard, not whether OpenAI actually infringed anyone's copyright. No court has yet ruled on that question, and the allegations remain unproven. The case now returns to the Ontario Superior Court, where it will move toward a hearing on the merits — the stage at which the court will hear whether OpenAI's use of the publishers' work actually breached Canadian copyright law. No hearing date has been set.
Why it matters beyond Canada
The decision lands as publishers and AI companies fight the same question in courtrooms around the world. In the United States, The New York Times and other publishers have sued OpenAI and Microsoft over similar training practices, while other media groups have struck licensing deals with the AI firms instead. Canada's case is now the furthest advanced in its own courts, and its outcome could shape how foreign AI companies are treated under Canadian law — and whether Canadian publishers can demand payment for work that trained the models.
For now, the publishers have won the right to make their case at home. The harder question — whether training an AI model on copyrighted journalism is itself a breach — still awaits its day in court.
