Guides · Copyright Litigation
Software, Website, and Digital Content Disputes
Software disputes turn on who owns the code and which parts of it are protected: functional elements, ideas, and industry-standard features are filtered out before programs are compared.
· Law checked through October 21, 2026. AI training status as of October 21, 2026.
In Short
Open-source licenses can be enforced both as contracts and through copyright. Copying a website's text, photos, or design can infringe, but scraping facts and data generally does not; those disputes turn instead on contract and computer-access laws. Courts are still deciding whether training generative AI on copyrighted works is fair use.
Common situations.
- A business learns that the contractor who built its app never assigned the code.
- A former employee starts a competing company with a program that works much like the old one.
- A competitor copies a company's website product descriptions and photos.
- A data company scrapes prices and listings from a Texas business's site.
Who owns the code.
| Situation | Owner | See |
|---|---|---|
| Code written by an employee within the scope of employment | The employer | Ownership, Registration, and the Right to Sue |
| Code written by an outside developer | The developer, unless there is a signed assignment; computer programs are not among the statutory categories for a commissioned work made for hire | 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 204(a) |
| Code paid for but never assigned | The developer; the client may have an implied nonexclusive license to use it | Lulirama Ltd. v. Axcess Broad. Servs., Inc., 128 F.3d 872 (5th Cir. 1997) |
| Open-source components | Their authors, subject to the license terms | See Open-source licenses, below |
Comparing programs.
The Fifth Circuit applies the abstraction-filtration-comparison method. The court breaks the program into levels of abstraction, filters out unprotectable elements (ideas, elements dictated by efficiency, compatibility, or industry standards, and public-domain material), and compares what remains (Eng'g Dynamics, Inc. v. Structural Software, Inc., 26 F.3d 1335 (5th Cir. 1994)). Reimplementing an interface so that programmers can use familiar commands can be fair use, as the Supreme Court held for Google's use of Java's declaring code (Google LLC v. Oracle Am., Inc., 593 U.S. 1 (2021)). A program's ideas and functions can be protected, if at all, by patent or trade secret law, not copyright. See Patent, Trade Secret, or Both?
Open-source licenses.
Open-source licenses grant broad rights on conditions, such as attribution or making source code available. A licensee that breaks a condition may be infringing, not merely breaching a contract, because its use is outside the license's scope (Jacobsen v. Katzer, 535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008)). Companies that ship products containing open-source code should track which licenses apply and comply with their conditions.
Websites and scraping.
| Issue | Governing law | Key points |
|---|---|---|
| Copying text, photos, video, or design | Copyright | Protected if original; facts, data, and short phrases are not (Feist Publ'ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)) |
| Removing author or license information | 17 U.S.C. § 1202 | Statutory damages of $2,500 to $25,000 per violation (§ 1203) |
| Bypassing technical access controls | 17 U.S.C. § 1201 | The defendant must itself circumvent the measure (MGE UPS Sys., Inc. v. GE Consumer & Indus., Inc., 622 F.3d 361 (5th Cir. 2010)) |
| Violating terms of use | Contract | Enforceability depends on how the terms were presented and accepted |
| Accessing a computer without authorization (federal) | Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030 | Liability for exceeding authorized access turns on whether the user entered areas of a system that were off-limits to it (Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021)); the Ninth Circuit held that scraping public pages likely does not access a computer "without authorization" (hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., 31 F.4th 1180 (9th Cir. 2022)) |
| Accessing a computer without consent (Texas) | Tex. Penal Code § 33.02; Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 143 | Civil claim for injury from a knowing or intentional violation of the Penal Code's computer crimes chapter |
A state-law claim based only on copying is preempted, but contract and computer-access claims, which require more than copying, can proceed alongside or instead of a copyright claim. See Proving Copyright Infringement.
AI training: status as of October 21, 2026.
| Case | Court | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Thomson Reuters Enter. Ctr. GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc. | Third Circuit | Sept. 29, 2026: copying Westlaw headnotes to train a competing, non-generative legal research tool was not fair use. The first federal appellate decision on AI training |
| Bartz v. Anthropic PBC | N.D. Cal. | June 2025: training on lawfully acquired books was fair use, but building a library of pirated copies was not. Resolved by a class settlement of about $1.5 billion, which has received final approval |
| Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc. | N.D. Cal. | June 2025: summary judgment for Meta on fair use for training, on that record, because the plaintiffs did not show market harm. Other claims continue, and new individual suits were filed in October 2026 |
| In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, including The New York Times | S.D.N.Y. | Consolidated cases. No ruling on fair use yet |
On the output side, a work generated entirely by AI, with no human author, cannot be registered (Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025), cert. denied (U.S. Mar. 2, 2026)). The Copyright Office's views on training appear in Part 3 of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence (pre-publication version, May 9, 2025), which does not bind courts. This table is updated at each monthly site check.
Texas forums for software disputes.
A software license or development dispute that turns on contract can be heard in Texas state court, and in the Texas Business Court when more than $5 million is in controversy (Tex. Gov't Code § 25A.004(d)(4)). Infringement claims belong in federal court. See Where Copyright Cases Are Heard.
Sources.
- 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 204(a), 1201-1203.
- 18 U.S.C. § 1030.
- Tex. Penal Code § 33.02; Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 143.001.
- Tex. Gov't Code § 25A.004(d)(4).
- Lulirama Ltd. v. Axcess Broad. Servs., Inc., 128 F.3d 872 (5th Cir. 1997).
- Eng'g Dynamics, Inc. v. Structural Software, Inc., 26 F.3d 1335 (5th Cir. 1994).
- Google LLC v. Oracle Am., Inc., 593 U.S. 1 (2021).
- Jacobsen v. Katzer, 535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008).
- Feist Publ'ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
- MGE UPS Sys., Inc. v. GE Consumer & Indus., Inc., 622 F.3d 361 (5th Cir. 2010).
- Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021).
- hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp., 31 F.4th 1180 (9th Cir. 2022).
- Thomson Reuters Enter. Ctr. GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc. (3d Cir. Sept. 29, 2026).
- Bartz v. Anthropic PBC (N.D. Cal.).
- Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 23-cv-03417 (N.D. Cal.).
- In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation (S.D.N.Y.).
- Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025), cert. denied (U.S. Mar. 2, 2026).
- Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 3: Generative AI Training (pre-publication version, May 9, 2025).
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Law checked through October 21, 2026. See the Disclaimer.