# Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sue OpenAI _Monday, March 16, 2026 at 1:02 PM EDT · AI, Policy · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_ ![Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sue OpenAI — Primary](https://img-cdn.tnwcdn.com/image/tnw-blurple?filter_last=1&fit=1280%2C640&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn0.tnwcdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F1%2Ffiles%2F2026%2F03%2FOpenAI.png&signature=70187422a7af3266d4dc13b050ab53ff) Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster filed a joint copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the company used their content to train ChatGPT without permission or compensation, The Next Web reported. The lawsuit claims OpenAI scraped and ingested copyrighted reference material from both publications, reproducing their content in AI-generated responses without attribution or licensing. The case joins a growing number of copyright lawsuits from publishers against AI companies, testing whether training AI models on copyrighted material constitutes fair use. ## Sources - [The Next Web](https://thenextweb.com/news/britannica-merriam-webster-openai-lawsuit-copyright) --- Canonical: https://techandbusiness.org/newswire/Xx2NJhLQJqQVPtk0mDT7DO Retrieved: 2026-05-09T22:32:14.262Z Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)