The New York Times filed a lawsuit against Brave Software Inc. on May 28, 2026, alleging the company copied its journalism without authorization, infringed copyrights and deliberately circumvented its paywall.
The lawsuit claims Brave scraped publisher content, including paywalled articles, to construct its search index and subsequently sold this data to artificial intelligence companies.
According to the complaint, Brave monetized the scraped content through its Search API, providing it to AI firms such as Anthropic, Perplexity and Mistral. The Times said this practice deprived the publisher of revenue.
Brave’s Ask Brave AI chat feature was also accused of reproducing and summarizing copyrighted articles, which the lawsuit stated replaced direct visits to publishers’ websites.
The New York Times alleged Brave enabled users to bypass its paywall and intentionally circumvented access restrictions.
Furthermore, the lawsuit claimed Brave removed The Times’s advertising and substituted its own, further impacting the publisher’s revenue streams.
The New York Times reported it sent cease-and-desist letters to Brave in August 2025 and April 2026, which were ignored, indicating willful infringement according to the complaint.
The legal action highlights growing tensions between major publishers and technology companies over content usage in the era of AI and digital distribution models.
Source: Search Engine Journal
