New York Times and Other Publishers Sue Brave Browser Over Alleged AI Content Scraping
The Lawsuits
The New York Times filed a lawsuit on Monday against Brave Software, the privacy-focused browser company founded in 2015, alleging that Brave scraped the outlet's copyrighted content and unlawfully distributed it to third-party AI companies. The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, names Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere as recipients of the allegedly misappropriated content.
In a separate but related filing on the same day, the Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel brought a similar lawsuit, also in Manhattan federal court.
The Allegations
The Times, which has previously sued OpenAI and Perplexity over comparable claims, characterizes Brave as a "supplier, dealer, and distributor of stolen copyrighted content" for AI companies.
"In this way, Brave acts both like a burglar that misappropriates the content of publishers, and an AI 'fence' that sells stolen content to third parties," the complaint states.
According to the suit, Brave built an index of more than 30 billion webpages using an unidentified crawler, leaving publishers unable to block it. The complaint also takes aim at a Brave browser feature that bypasses paywalls, as well as the company's practice of blocking publishers' ads while selling its own.
Company Background and Relief Sought
Brave has raised approximately $250 million to date, according to private-market trackers. The Times is seeking an injunction and damages.
Brave did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Broader Context
The lawsuit adds to a growing wave of litigation in 2026 over how AI companies and the tools that support them obtain and use copyrighted material. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, publishers are increasingly scrutinizing the data pipelines that feed large language models, and courts are being asked to define the boundaries between web scraping, fair use, and unauthorized distribution.
via TechCrunch AI