Microsoft and its subsidiaries seek to dismiss a proposed class-action lawsuit in a US Federal Court
Microsoft and its subsidiaries seek to dismiss a proposed class-action lawsuit in a US Federal Court
Microsoft and its subsidiaries- GitHub and OpenAI in an appeal preferred before the San Francisco Federal Court sought to dismiss a proposed class- action lawsuit over the open-source code used to train their artificial intelligence systems.
Launched in 2021, Copilot controls OpenAI's technology to generate and suggest lines of code directly within a programmer's code editor. The tool, which is skilled on publicly available code from GitHub, increased concerns over whether it violated the copyright laws soon after its release.
GitHub, is an online repository for hosting code, claimed that it "has been committed to innovating responsibly with Copilot from the start and that the motion to dismiss the lawsuit is a testament to our belief in the work we have done to achieve that."
The plaintiffs, sought to represent people who own copyrights to code on GitHub, filed the lawsuit to sue Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI in November, 2022. It was asserted by them that the companies trained Copilot using code on GitHub without complying with open-source licensing terms, leading to Copilot unlawfully reproducing their code.
The complaint read, "Copilot's goal is to replace a huge swath of open source by taking it and keeping it inside a GitHub-controlled paywall. It violates the licenses that open-source programmers chose and monetizes their code despite GitHub's pledge never to do so."
Microsoft claimed that the plaintiffs lack sufficient evidence to bring the case before the Court and failed to argue specific injuries suffered from the companies' actions. The companies allege in their filing that the copyright allegations would "run headlong into the doctrine of fair use," which allows the unlicensed use of copyrighted works in certain situations.
As per the filing, Microsoft and GitHub stated in the complaint "fails on two intrinsic defects: lack of injury and lack of an otherwise viable claim," while OpenAI similarly stated that the plaintiffs "allege a grab bag of claims that fail to plead violations of cognizable legal rights." The companies argue that the plaintiffs rely on "hypothetical events" to make their claim, and claimed that they do not describe how they were personally harmed by the tool.
Additionally, Microsoft and GitHub go on to claim that the plaintiffs are the ones who "undermine open-source principles" by asking for "an injunction and a multi-billion-dollar windfall" in relation to the "software that they willingly share as open source."
The companies cited a 2021 US Supreme Court decision that Google's use of Oracle source code to build its operating system was transformative fair use.
The court hearing to dismiss the suit will take place in May.
