Multiple media outlets sue Brave over alleged unauthorized copyright scraping for AI companies

The New York Times initiated legal action against the privacy-focused browser company Brave, alongside Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel, alleging the unauthorized scraping and resale of copyrighted material to AI firms such as Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. These lawsuits were filed in the Manhattan Federal Court on Monday, November 3, 2026. The New York Times specifically characterized Brave as an intermediary and distributor of stolen content, asserting that the browser acted as a thief by appropriating publisher material and subsequently selling it to AI entities. The complaint detailed that Brave utilized an undisclosed crawler to build an index of over 30 billion web pages, which publishers could not prevent. Furthermore, the litigation targets Brave's functionality that allows users to bypass paywalls and its business practice of replacing publisher advertisements with its own. The New York Times has previously sued OpenAI and Perplexity over similar claims. Brave, founded in 2015, has reportedly raised approximately $250 million in private market funding, and the Times is seeking an injunction and damages.