Judge denies Google fee bid as publishers drop suit
A federal judge denied Google’s request for attorneys’ fees after publishers Cengage and Hachette withdrew their motion to intervene in the multidistrict Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation, per Chat GPT Is Eating the World, which obtained the ruling. Judge Eumi Lee also said she was concerned that the publishers had filed a new, separate copyright suit roughly 3,000 miles from the ongoing case.
Why it matters: The ruling leaves the multidistrict Google training-data suit intact while signaling judicial skepticism toward publishers pursuing a separate case far from the consolidated one, a dynamic that could shape where future AI-training suits get filed.
The record: GoogleAI training & copyright litigation
Via Chat GPT Is Eating the World ↗
Posted to the wire August 22, 2026.