On April 3, 2025, the Budapest District Court made a request for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) relating to the application of EU copyright rules to outputs generated by large language model (LLM)-based chatbots, specifically Google’s Gemini (formerly Bard). This Case C-250/25 involves a dispute between Like Company, a Hungarian news publisher, and Google Ireland Ltd.
The parties’ claims are as follows:
- Like Company claims Google’s chatbot reproduces and makes available its protected press publications without consent, exceeding the exception for “use of individual words or very short extracts” under Article 15(1) of the DSM Directive, thus harming its economic rights. It argues the chatbot’s responses amount to both reproduction and communication to the public, necessitating authorization. Additionally, it contends the LLM’s training involved unauthorized reproduction of its content, beyond what Article 4 of the DSM Copyright Directive permits.
- Google counters that the chatbot’s outputs do not constitute reproduction or communication to the public under Hungarian or EU law. It argues the chatbot does not serve a “new public” as required by CJEU case law, and much of the chatbot’s output is generated or altered content (including hallucinations), not mere copied material. Google asserts that even if reproduction occurred, it falls under exceptions for temporary reproduction (Article 5(1) of the Infosec Directive) and text and data mining (Article 4 of DSM Copyright Directive). Google argues that Gemini (Bard) is a creative tool, not a database, and respects users’ rights under Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (freedom of expression and information).
The referral involves several provisions of Directive (EU) 2019/790, known as the DSM Copyright Directive. Article 15(1) of the DSM Copyright Directive grants press publishers certain rights with respect to the use of their publications by information society service providers, and Article 4 of the DSM Copyright Directive provides an exception to the rights of reproduction and extraction for the purposes of text and data mining, provided the use is not expressly reserved by the rights holder. The referral also concerns several provisions of Directive 2001/29/EC, known as the InfoSoc Directive. These include Article 2, which provides authors and certain other creators with the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit the reproduction of their works or other protected subject matter, and Article 3(2), which provides authors with the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit the “communication to the public of their works”.
The Hungarian Court submitted four questions that ask, essentially:
- Does the chatbot’s display of text similar to press content—and of a length protected by Article 15 of the DSM Copyright Directive—constitute “communication to the public” under the cited provisions, and if so, does it matter that the chatbot output is the “result of a process in which the chatbot merely predicts the next word on the basis of observed patterns”?
- Does training the LLM amount to “reproduction” under Article 2 of the InfoSec Directive, given the model’s reliance on observed linguistic patterns?
- If the answer to question (2) is yes, does the reproduction fall under the text and data mining exception in Article 4 of the DSM Copyright Directive, which allows certain uses without permission unless rights holders have opted out?
- When a user prompts the chatbot with text matching or referring to a press publication, and the chatbot’s response contains part or all of that publication, does this constitute reproduction by the service provider?
This will be the first case in which the CJEU will address legal questions at the intersection of generative AI and EU copyright law. A judgment is expected by late-2026.
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