The New York Times sues Brave over AI search and its search API
A complaint dated 2 November 2026, captioned The New York Times Company v. Brave Software, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Civil Action No. 26-cv-9549, alleges that Brave copied Times journalism into a search index and supplied it to users and to other generative-AI companies. The last page is stamped Case 1:26-cv-09549, Document 1, Filed 11/02/26. The complaint says the index includes over 30 billion webpages, which it attributes to Brave, and that Brave has not identified the crawler, so publishers cannot block it. It describes Ask Brave as an AI feature that answers from that index through retrieval-augmented generation, and the Brave Search API as a service other AI companies pay for. It names Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere as customers in that allegation. They are not named as defendants. It also describes a Brave Browser setting called Paywall blocker, and built-in ad blocking that it says removes publishers' ads and shows Brave's own ads.
Source: Complaint, The New York Times Company v. Brave Software, Inc. (opens in a new tab), 2 Nov 2026Also: TechCrunch, 2 Nov 2026, 11:19 AM PST (opens in a new tab)
A complaint dated 2 November 2026, captioned The New York Times Company v. Brave Software, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Civil Action No. 26-cv-9549, alleges that Brave copied Times journalism into a search index and supplied it to users and to other generative-AI companies. The last page is stamped Case 1:26-cv-09549, Document 1, Filed 11/02/26. The complaint says the index includes over 30 billion webpages, which it attributes to Brave, and that Brave has not identified the crawler, so publishers cannot block it. It describes Ask Brave as an AI feature that answers from that index through retrieval-augmented generation, and the Brave Search API as a service other AI companies pay for. It names Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere as customers in that allegation. They are not named as defendants. It also describes a Brave Browser setting called Paywall blocker, and built-in ad blocking that it says removes publishers' ads and shows Brave's own ads.
The complaint pleads direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, a Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim, and unjust enrichment under New York law. It alleges Brave has made more than $100 million by copying and reselling publishers' work without consent, and that publishers have received nothing. The prayer asks for statutory damages, actual damages, restitution of profits, a permanent injunction, and costs and attorneys' fees. These are allegations. The complaint is not a judgment.
TechCrunch, posted at 11:19 AM PST on 2 November 2026, reports that the Times sued that Monday, and that the Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel filed a similar lawsuit the same day, also in federal court in Manhattan. That second complaint was not opened. TechCrunch says Brave did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What it means for business: a news publisher is suing the company it says supplies search content to AI products, including through an API. The named AI companies are described as customers, not defendants, and nothing in the pages that were opened decides the claims. This describes the complaint and the TechCrunch report. It is not advice on a licence or a defence.