22OCT

Globe and Mail, Postmedia sue Anthropic

3 min read

16:20UTC

Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press allege Anthropic built Claude on their journalism and keeps scraping their pages when users ask it questions.

← Back to USA Today sues OpenAI but not Microsoft Jump to analysis ↓

IndustryDeveloping

Key takeaway

Canada's national publishers now sue both OpenAI and Anthropic, while Village Media licenses to OpenAI.

Postmedia (National Post), Torstar (Toronto Star), The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press sued Anthropic in an Ontario court on 6 October. Their statement of claim alleges the company used their journalism to build its Claude models without a licence⁠¹. Cartt.ca first reported the claim; CBC News carried it on 19 October. Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment, CBC reported, and none of the allegations has been tested in court.

The claim reaches past copying. It alleges breach of the sites' terms of service, circumvention of technical measures that restrict copying, and unjust enrichment (profiting at another's expense without legal justification). On that count it says Anthropic "raised significant capital" without "a valid licence from any of the News Media Companies". It also alleges Anthropic keeps scraping their pages when users put questions to Claude, which brings retrieval into the case alongside training.

The same four publishers, with CBC/Radio-Canada, sued OpenAI in November 2024, and OpenAI is contesting whether Ontario courts have jurisdiction at all. With this claim, the Canadian group now carries two such cases. In the US, Anthropic agreed to settle the Bartz v Anthropic class action for $1.5bn.

In mid-September, less than three weeks before the filing, local news group Village Media signed with OpenAI. Its stories will be cited in ChatGPT, and OpenAI supplies funding, credits for its models and support for Open Door, a local care-navigator service launching in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario⁠². Canada's national publishers sue both AI developers while Village Media takes OpenAI's money and credits.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Anthropic is a US company that makes Claude, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. AI chatbots learn by reading large amounts of text, much of it taken from websites. Four of Canada's biggest news organisations, which publish papers such as The National Post, the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail and run the national news agency, say Anthropic copied their articles without asking or paying. They have gone to a court in Ontario to ask for money. They also say Claude keeps reading their websites when people ask it questions. The same publishers are already suing OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, over similar claims.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The claim's allegation of ongoing scraping when users ask Claude questions targets retrieval, which happens every day the product runs. A training claim looks back at a finished act; a retrieval claim covers continuing conduct, so the publishers' exposure argument grows with use.

Canada's market has also split by publisher size. Village Media, a local group, signed with OpenAI in mid-September for citations, funding, model credits and support for its Open Door service. The national groups with large archives have chosen litigation against both OpenAI and Anthropic.

What could happen next?

Precedent
A ruling on Ontario jurisdiction in the OpenAI case will decide whether both Canadian suits can proceed at home.
Consequence
The retrieval allegation, if it survives, could make Claude's live web access a separate source of liability from past training.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from Canada

Canada

LeftRight

Primary parallel: In Bartz v Anthropic, a US class of rights holders reached a $1.5bn settlement, with 447,576 of 482,460 works claimed by May 2026 and a fee petition of $187.5m. That case established that Anthropic will pay at scale to close a training-copy claim, which the Canadian publishers can cite in any settlement talks.

Counter-parallel: The same four publishers, with CBC/Radio-Canada, sued OpenAI in November 2024. That case has not reached the merits, because OpenAI is contesting whether Ontario courts have jurisdiction.

Village Media's OpenAI deal pays partly in kind: model credits and support for a local care-navigator service in Sault Ste. Marie, alongside funding. Village Media disclosed no cash figure.

The national publishers' claim says Anthropic 'raised significant capital' without a licence from any of them. Framing damages around capital raised, rather than lost traffic, ties the claim to Anthropic's fundraising rather than to the publishers' own audience figures.

Consensus view: The statement of claim filed for Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press pleads beyond copyright. Unjust enrichment, terms-of-service breach and circumvention of copy restrictions give the publishers routes to damages that do not depend on how a court treats training under the Copyright Act.

Counter-view: Anthropic's own submission to Australia's Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence sets out its preferred model: no blanket exception for training, but a 'narrow form of conditional approval' in which rights holders opt out through Robots.txt. On that model, the burden sits with publishers to block crawlers, not with Anthropic to seek a licence.

Key tension: Whether Ontario courts will hear claims against US AI developers at all. OpenAI is contesting Ontario jurisdiction in the 2024 case, and that ruling will shape this one.

First Reported In

Update #13 · USA Today sues OpenAI but not Microsoft

Press Gazette· 22 Oct 2026

Read original →

Different Perspectives

Publicis Groupe

Publicis Groupe credited AI demand for its Connected Media growth in the 13 October third-quarter release, reporting net revenue of €3,808m, up 5.0% organically. It named no AI product, so investors get the AI claim without a product to measure it against.

Educational Broadcasting System

Educational Broadcasting System premiered EBS AI Literature Theatre on 16 October, remaking 11 Korean literary classics with generative AI. Korea's public education broadcaster puts AI-made drama on air under its own name, while the BBC's director-general said he 'got in trouble' for praising an AI Doctor Who episode.

Hakuhodo

Hakuhodo began selling its in-house Image Similarity Checker on 19 October, scoring AI-generated ad creative against similar images on the web and logging who checked what. The Japanese agency is selling the compliance step around generative advertising and leaves the legal judgment with its clients.

Lisa Nandy

Nandy told Sky on 15 October she is minded to issue a public interest intervention notice on its purchase of ITV's Media and Entertainment business, on four grounds including news plurality. She notes Comcast's Sky News undertakings expire in December 2028 and do not cover ITV News or ITN, in which Sky would take a 20% stake.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation asked Parliament's AI committee to extend the News Bargaining Incentive to AI firms and hold them to the copyright, defamation and privacy rules news outlets follow. With SBS telling the same committee that robots.txt is routinely ignored, the public broadcasters are contesting the opt-out Anthropic proposed.

Editorial Perfil

Perfil reported on 14 October that Civil Court No. 57 kept its damages suit against OpenAI and Microsoft out of the federal courts, and it wants a pre-trial inspection of their California servers. Its lawyer says Microsoft Argentina came to mediation without a serious offer, and Perfil seeks payment rather than takedowns.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.