🔍 Read the full analysis: AI Chatbots And Copyright: What The EU View Means For Three Groups on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
On 3 November 2026, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice that chatbots retrieving and reusing press articles may infringe publishers’ rights in certain circumstances. He said the facts in the Gemini case do not appear to meet his proposed test; the opinion is not binding, and the Hungarian court must decide the dispute.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the European Union’s top court on 3 November 2026 that AI chatbots may infringe press publishers’ rights when they retrieve and reuse online news articles in answers, but only under specific conditions. In the dispute over Google Gemini’s summary of a Hungarian article about dolphins, Szpunar said those conditions do not appear to be met; his opinion is nonbinding, and the Hungarian court will decide the case.
The opinion concerns Case C‑250/25, Like Company v Google Ireland. Like Company, which operates Hungarian news portals, alleges that Google used its articles to train Gemini and repeatedly reproduced and made them available through the chatbot from 13 June 2023 to 31 May 2024. The dispute began after Gemini summarized a July 2023 article about a singer’s reported plan to bring dolphins to a pool on the Tihany peninsula. These are allegations in the case, not findings that Google infringed copyright.
Szpunar’s proposed test focuses on how the chatbot obtains and presents an article. An infringement may arise if a system bypasses barriers such as a paywall or anti-scraping measure, or if its answer reproduces the article’s distinctive expression so recognisably that a user can do without the original publication. Repeating the same facts, by itself, would not meet that test: the opinion distinguishes freely reportable facts from the protected way an article is written.
For the example before him, Szpunar said the apparent absence of access barriers and recognisable wording, along with safeguards attributed to Google, meant the conditions did not appear to be satisfied. He also advised the court to treat the questions about training as inadmissible because the record did not establish that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. His additional comments on training were made for completeness, not as a ruling on the case.
Infographic 01 · Where the line runs
When a chatbot answer infringes a publisher's right
Advocate General Szpunar's test in Case C‑250/25 for chatbots that retrieve news articles in real time and reuse them in their answers.
Stays free
- Reporting the same facts. Nobody owns the news itself (pts 199–200).
- A short factual summary, presented differently (pt 208).
- An overview built from several sources, restructured, with links back (pts 208, 234).
- Individual words or very short extracts (pt 201).
Can infringe
- Getting around a paywall or anti-scraping block to fetch the article (pt 188).
- An answer that keeps the article’s structure and phrasing, even paraphrased, so readers can skip the original (pts 202, 205, 207).
- Systematically recognisable articles in answers to related questions: making available to the public (pts 213, 240).
The test, step by step
For a chatbot that fetches a news article live (RAG) and answers a user
- Is it an online use by a service in the EU?Yes for RAG answers to EU users, wherever the servers are (pts 165–169).
- Did the bot get in lawfully?No circumvention of effective technical measures (pt 188).
- Is the article’s form of expression recognisable in the answer, to the point of substitution?Side-by-side comparison; facts do not count (pts 196–209).
- Is the provider responsible?If inherent to its business model, or no reasonable measures such as respecting blocks and output filters (pts 221–222).
- Temporary copies during retrieval are then exempt under Art. 5(1) InfoSoc; the TDM exception does not apply to RAG (pts 179–189).
An Advocate General’s opinion, not a judgment. General information, not legal advice.
Sources: Opinion of AG Szpunar, C‑250/25 (provisional text), CURIA press release No 155/26 (3 Nov 2026). Point numbers refer to the provisional text.
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What the Test Means for Publishers
The opinion points toward a boundary between using reporting as information and reproducing a publication’s protected expression. Publishers could have a basis to challenge chatbot use where a service gets around restrictions on access or supplies answers that closely substitute for an article. But the proposed test would not give publishers ownership over the underlying news facts or a general right to prevent summaries.
For chatbot providers and AI search services, the opinion signals legal risk in how systems access online material and shape responses. Respecting access controls and avoiding answers that function as near-copies could matter under the approach Szpunar recommends. For readers, the dispute may affect whether chatbot answers contain more original synthesis and links back to reporting. Those are possible implications, not outcomes established by the opinion or the pending judgment.
The distinction also matters to licensing. The EU press publishers’ right, adopted in 2019, was intended in part to address online services that use extracts from news publications. Szpunar’s approach could give publishers leverage over some forms of chatbot reuse without creating an exclusive claim to the facts they report.
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From News Aggregators to Gemini
Like Company brought its claim in a Budapest court under the press publishers’ right in Article 15(1) of the EU Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, adopted in 2019. The right was designed with online uses of press material, including news aggregation, in view. The case asks whether it also covers the way a generative chatbot retrieves and presents material in response to a user.
The Hungarian court referred four questions to the Court of Justice: two about model training and two about chatbot answers. The hearing took place on 10 March 2026, after written observations from nine EU governments and the European Commission. The Court of Justice described the dispute as the first generative AI case to reach it.
On training, Szpunar’s primary position was procedural: the questions should be rejected because the case record did not show that the articles were used in Gemini’s training data. He reasoned that the cited article appeared in July 2023, while Gemini 1.0 was released in December 2023, and that the example was consistent with live web retrieval, also known as retrieval-augmented generation. Separately, he said that, in principle, EU text-and-data-mining rules may cover training, subject to rights holders’ ability to opt out in a machine-readable form. Those observations do not decide whether Google trained on Like Company material.
“The first generative AI case to reach the Court of Justice.”
— Court of Justice of the European Union
Questions Before the Final Ruling
The opinion is not the court’s final decision. The Court of Justice may follow Szpunar’s advice, but it is not bound by it. No date for the judgment has been set, and the Hungarian court will apply the EU court’s eventual interpretation to the dispute.
It also remains unresolved whether Google used Like Company’s articles for training, whether any chatbot response infringed the publisher’s rights, and what specific safeguards were in place. Szpunar said the evidence did not establish training use and that the example answer did not appear to meet his proposed infringement test. Those assessments are not final findings by the courts.
Court Judgment and Case Return
The next major step is a judgment from the Court of Justice, which will answer the EU-law questions referred by the Hungarian court. The court has not announced a date. Its statistics show that preliminary references took an average of 16.9 months in 2025, but that figure does not set a timetable for this case.
After the EU court rules, the Budapest court will continue the national proceedings and decide the dispute in light of that interpretation and the evidence. Until then, Szpunar’s test offers guidance on the legal issues, but it does not establish liability for Google or settle how the rules will apply to other chatbot services.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court of Justice ruled that Gemini infringed copyright?
No. The court has not issued its judgment. Advocate General Szpunar delivered a nonbinding opinion, and the Hungarian court will decide the dispute after the EU court answers the referred questions.
When might a chatbot’s use of a news article infringe publishers’ rights?
Under Szpunar’s proposed test, it may infringe if the chatbot obtains an article by bypassing access barriers or reproduces its expression so recognisably that the answer substitutes for the original. Reporting the same facts alone would not be enough under the opinion.
Did the opinion decide whether Gemini trained on Like Company’s articles?
No. Szpunar advised that the training questions were inadmissible because the case record did not establish that the articles were used for training. His additional discussion of text-and-data mining rules was not a finding about Google’s actual training data.
What happens after the Advocate General’s opinion?
The Court of Justice will issue its judgment, with no date announced. The Budapest court will then apply the EU court’s interpretation to the remaining issues in Like Company’s case.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
