Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI addressed a proposed class-action lawsuit filed by a group of anonymous copyright owners, accusing the companies of misusing copyrighted source code to power CoPilot. The companies’ filing, presented in San Francisco federal court on Thursday, cites fair use and says the lawsuit is not maintainable because it “fails on two intrinsic defects: lack of injury and lack of an otherwise viable claim.”
Copilot was greeted with copyright concerns from developers after some programmers paid attention It is creating its own copyrighted code without attribution or license. Programmer and lawyer Matthew Buttrick took the first step november Joseph Savery to file suit against the concerned companies with the help of law firm. the complaining party followed the other party proposed class action lawsuit Representing two anonymous GitHub users as plaintiffs.
“Copilot aims to transform a vast swath of open source by keeping it inside a GitHub-controlled paywall,” the complaint states. “It violates the licenses that open-source programmers have chosen and monetize their code, despite GitHub’s pledge never to do so.”
However, Microsoft and GitHub said in their filing that the plaintiffs failed to provide sufficient information regarding the claims and allegations. Both companies said that “there is no issue or dispute here” and called the complaint “a series of fictional events”.
“Plaintiffs do not allege that this extraordinary new tool harmed them in any way,” Microsoft and GitHub Explained, “They don’t explain how anything was taken from them by Copilot teaching them about their code. They don’t allege that Copilot did anything improper with their code, nor did GitHub or Microsoft access their personal information.” did something wrong with.
OpenAI shared the same idea, saying Plaintiffs allege a “grab bag of claims that fail to plead infringement of cognizable legal rights.”
Microsoft and GitHub further stated that the party initiating the lawsuit was undermining open source principles “with their demand for an injunction and a multi-billion dollar windfall with respect to software that they volunteered as open source”. share with.”
A court hearing to dismiss the suit will be held in May.