Publishers' AI Copyright Suit Against Meta and Zuckerberg Moves to California

Where will five publishers and Scott Turow fight Meta over AI training? Not in New York. On September 25, 2026, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York granted motions by Meta Platforms and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg to transfer the case to the Northern District of California. The California court logged the transfer on October 8, 2026.

Who is suing, and what they claim

The plaintiffs are Elsevier Inc., Cengage Learning, Inc., Hachette Book Group, Inc., Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC, and McGraw Hill LLC, plus the author Scott Turow and his publishing company, S.C.R.I.B.E., Inc. The complaint was filed in New York on May 5, 2026, as a putative class action against Meta and Zuckerberg.

According to Judge Castel's opinion, the plaintiffs allege that Meta knowingly "torrented" their copyrighted materials to train its large language model, and covered its tracks by removing copyright management information, which they say violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They bring three claims of unlawful reproduction and one of unlawful distribution against Meta and Zuckerberg, a contributory infringement claim against Zuckerberg, and a DMCA claim against Meta.

The opinion quotes the complaint's allegation that Zuckerberg was a "primary actor" in the infringement. It also quotes the complaint's claim that the defendants "have infringed many thousands of copyrights belonging to many members of the Class."

Why the judge moved it

Six actions against Meta with substantially similar claims are pending in California, all assigned to U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria. They are Kadrey v. Meta, Entrepreneur Media v. Meta, Carreyrou v. Meta, Chicken Soup for the Soul v. Meta, Cognella v. Meta, and Sullivan v. Meta. Five of the six were filed before the New York case. Judge Castel held that the first-filed rule applies, which creates a presumption in favor of transfer.

He then weighed the convenience factors. Three of the seven plaintiffs are headquartered in New York, and the judge said their choice of forum still counts, though less in a class action. Meta acknowledged at argument that the torrenting took place in Menlo Park, New York and London. Meta said about 45 percent of its 53,810 full-time U.S. employees work in or from the Northern District of California, and about 14 percent in the Southern District of New York.

The deciding factor was the state of the California cases. The opinion says fact discovery has been completed in some of them and that summary judgment motions are expected to be heard in February 2027. Meta's counsel represented that, subject to agreement on a protective order and other protocols, its rolling production to these plaintiffs would begin on October 12 whatever the court decided, so the judge found no prejudicial delay. He also flagged the risk of inconsistent standards if the same conduct were litigated in two circuits.

"The Court concludes that the presumption in favor of transfer premised upon the first-filed rule has not been overcome," Judge Castel wrote, finding that the defendants showed "by clear and convincing evidence" that the balance tips toward California.

What the Kadrey ruling did and didn't decide

The opinion recounts where the lead California case stands. In Kadrey, Judge Chhabria granted Meta summary judgment on the authors' claim that training its models on their books infringed their copyrights, but stressed that the ruling affected only those thirteen authors and "does not stand for the proposition that Meta's use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful." The distribution claims in Kadrey remain pending, and its DMCA claim failed on partial summary judgment.

What happens next

The California docket now lists the case as 4:26-cv-11415. An October 8 scheduling order sets an initial case management conference for January 5, 2027, at 2:00 p.m. in Oakland, by videoconference only, with a case management statement due December 29, 2026. As of October 9, the docket did not show an order relating the case to Judge Chhabria's.

Why it matters for authors

The publishers' suit over Meta's AI now sits in the same court as the authors' cases. Judge Castel moved it largely because the California cases are further along, so the publishers' claims will be measured against a record that already exists.

Distribution is the live question. The authors' training claim already lost one round in Kadrey, on that record. The torrenting distribution claims are still pending, and the publishers plead both.

This is a class action. If a class is certified, it would cover copyright owners well beyond the named plaintiffs. Nothing has been certified, and no claim has been decided on the merits in this case.

Related desk coverage: Judge Stein strikes the AI "dilution" paper in the OpenAI copyright MDL.

Sources

• U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y.: Opinion and Order granting transfer, Elsevier Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., 1:26-cv-03689 (September 25, 2026)
• CourtListener: S.D.N.Y. docket, 1:26-cv-03689
• CourtListener: N.D. Cal. docket, 4:26-cv-11415 (transfer received and scheduling order, October 8, 2026)