AI lawsuits in the Northern District of California

The Northern District of California — home to most AI labs — is the busiest US court for AI litigation. Bartz v. Anthropic, the Andersen v. Stability AI class, the OpenAI MDL transferee, and most of the foundation-model copyright class actions are here.

42 cases · verified against public dockets · updated weekly

Tremblay / Silverman v. OpenAI
N.D. Cal. → SDNY MDL · Filed Jun 28, 2023
Pending

Direct copyright; vicarious; DMCA 1202(b)(1)/(b)(3); state law (consolidates Tremblay, Silverman, Chabon)

Matthew Sacks and Michael Kochin v. Anthropic PBC
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California · Filed 2025-12-22
Pending

Plaintiffs, authors who opted out of the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement, allege copyright infringement by AI companies including Anthropic for using their works obtained from shadow libraries without…

John Liggett Sr. v. C3.ai. et al.
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California · Filed 2025-08-22
Pending

Second C3.ai securities class action, covering class period February 26 – August 8, 2025. Alleges management concealed that CEO Siebel's significant health issues impaired his ability to close deals,…

In re SoundHound AI. Securities Litigation
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California · Filed 2025-03-31
Dismissed

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) accused of concealing material weaknesses in internal controls over financial reporting that impaired its ability to properly account for corporate acquisitions (SYNQ3 an…

xAI. v. OpenAI. (trade secrets)
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California · Filed 2025-01-01
Dismissed

Musk's xAI sued OpenAI alleging it poached xAI employees and misappropriated trade secrets. Judge Rita F. Lin dismissed the complaint, finding it 'notably absent' of allegations about OpenAI's own ac…

Musk v. Altman et al. (OpenAI for-profit conversion)
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland) · Filed 2024-08-05
Pending

Musk's wide-ranging 26-claim complaint alleges OpenAI and Altman fraudulently induced his $44.8M donation by promising OpenAI would remain an open, nonprofit AI lab for humanity's benefit, then engin…

Petryazhna v. Google
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California · Filed 2024-08-02
Dismissed

Plaintiffs allege Google surreptitiously and without consent transcribed millions of YouTube users' videos, including plaintiff's registered copyrighted works, to create training datasets for its Gem…

Dubus v. Nvidia
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California · Filed 2024-05-02
Pending

Andre Dubus III and Susan Orlean, authors owning registered copyrights in books alleged to be included in the training dataset used by NVIDIA to train its NeMo Megatron large language models, filed a…

In re Databricks AI Copyright Litigation (Nazemian / Makkai)
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California · Filed 2024-03-08
Pending

Authors Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, and Stewart O'Nan filed a class action complaint alleging direct copyright infringement by MosaicML for training its MPT LLM models on the RedPajama-Books dataset,…

T. et al. v. OpenAI LP et al. (A.T. and J.H. consumer privacy)
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California · Filed 2023-09-05
Pending

Consumer privacy class action filed September 5, 2023 against OpenAI and Microsoft alleging misuse of plaintiffs' personal data collected from social media platforms and other sites to train ChatGPT…

PM v. OpenAI LP et al. (Clarkson Law Firm privacy class action)
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California · Filed 2023-06-28
Pending

158-page class action filed by Clarkson Law Firm alleging OpenAI and Microsoft 'secretly scraped' personal data of hundreds of millions of internet users — including children — without consent to tra…

Reckstin Family Trust v. C3.ai. et al.
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California · Filed 2022-03-04
Dismissed

Securities class action alleging C3.ai and its executives made materially false and misleading statements about the company's AI capabilities, customer relationships (especially Baker Hughes partners…

David Greene v. Google
N.D. Cal. (removed from state court)
Pending

State law (removed on federal preemption)

Abdi Nazemian v. NVIDIA
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright (consolidates Dubus v. NVIDIA)

BMG v. Anthropic
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright; vicarious; contributory; DMCA 1202(b)(1)/(b)(3)

Carreyrou v. Anthropic
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright (multi-defendant)

Carreyrou v. OpenAI
N.D. Cal. (expected MDL transfer)
Pending

Direct copyright

Chicken Soup for the Soul v. Anthropic
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright (8-defendant)

Denial v. OpenAI
N.D. Cal. → SDNY MDL
Pending

Direct copyright; vicarious; DMCA 1202(b)(1); CFAA; state law

Entrepreneur Media v. Meta
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright; contributory infringement; DMCA 1202(b)

Gardner v. Runway AI
N.D. Cal.
Pending

DMCA 1201(a); CA UCL

Google v. SerpApi
N.D. Cal.
Pending

DMCA 1201(a)(1)(A)/(a)(2)

Hendrix v. Apple
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright (consolidated with Martinez-Conde and Alexander)

In re Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright; vicarious infringement; DMCA 1202(b)(1)/(b)(3) (consolidating Zhang and Leovy)

In re Mosaic LLM Litigation
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright; vicarious (consolidates O'Nan and Makkai)

In re Salesforce LLM Copyright Infringement Litigation
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright (consolidating Tanzer and Alexander)

James v. Cerebras Systems
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright

James v. Together Computer
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright

Kleiner v. Adobe
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright

Lyon v. Adobe
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright

Millette v. Google
N.D. Cal.
Dismissed

Direct copyright; state law (voluntarily dismissed)

Millette v. NVIDIA
N.D. Cal.
Dismissed

Direct copyright; state law (voluntarily dismissed)

Millette v. OpenAI
N.D. Cal. → SDNY MDL
Pending

Direct copyright; state law

Strike 3 Holdings v. Meta
N.D. Cal.
Pending

Direct copyright; vicarious; contributory

Ted Entertainment v. Amazon
N.D. Cal.
Pending

DMCA 1201(a)

Ted Entertainment v. Apple
N.D. Cal.
Pending

DMCA 1201(a)

Ted Entertainment v. ByteDance
N.D. Cal.
Pending

DMCA 1201(a)

Ted Entertainment v. Meta
N.D. Cal.
Pending

DMCA 1201(a)

Ted Entertainment v. NVIDIA
N.D. Cal.
Pending

DMCA 1201(a)

Ted Entertainment v. OpenAI
N.D. Cal.
Pending

DMCA 1201(a)

Youngblood v. Meta
N.D. Cal.
Dismissed

DMCA 1201(a) (voluntarily dismissed)

Youngblood v. NVIDIA
N.D. Cal.
Dismissed

DMCA 1201(a) (voluntarily dismissed)

Frequently asked questions

How many AI lawsuits are in the Northern District of California?
42 AI-related lawsuits are tracked in the Northern District of California (N.D. Cal.). The list is verified weekly against public dockets.
Which judges hear AI cases in N.D. Cal.?
Active AI-case judges in this district include Alsup, Chhabria, Tigar, Martinez-Olguin, Gonzalez Rogers. Case assignments are made on the standard random-draw basis; this list reflects judges with two or more AI-related cases on their docket.
What types of AI cases are filed here?
Most cases here involve copyright over training data, output infringement, privacy/biometric claims, or right-of-publicity. See the case list above for the specific claim profile of each suit.
Where can I find the docket?
Each case page links to PACER (paid) and CourtListener (free) for the underlying docket. Foreign court records link to the equivalent registry.

Browse the full database

This page is a curated slice of the AI Lawsuit Tracker. For the complete picture, see all 159 cases, defendants by company, the copyright cluster, or the latest rulings.