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TL;DR
On Nov. 3, 2026, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice that chatbots may infringe press publishers’ rights if they access articles unlawfully or reproduce recognisable expression. He said the test does not appear to be met in Like Company’s case against Google; the opinion is not a final ruling, and the Hungarian court will decide the dispute.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice on Nov. 3 that a chatbot can infringe press publishers’ rights when it retrieves and reuses news articles in certain circumstances, including by bypassing access restrictions or reproducing recognisable expression. But his analysis suggests those conditions do not appear to apply in Like Company’s case against Google, leaving the Hungarian court to decide the dispute; the adviser’s opinion is not binding.
The case, Like Company v Google Ireland (C‑250/25), concerns a Hungarian publisher’s claim that Google’s Gemini chatbot reproduced its articles in answers. Like Company runs several Hungarian news portals. According to the Court of Justice’s press release, it says Google repeatedly reproduced and made its articles available through Gemini between June 13, 2023, and May 31, 2024, and also used the material to train language models.
The dispute arose after Gemini summarised a Hungarian article about a proposal to bring dolphins to Lake Balaton. Szpunar’s proposed test focuses on how the chatbot obtained and used the material: unlawful access, such as circumventing a paywall or anti-scraping measure, could infringe rights. An answer could also cross the line if it repeats the article’s distinctive expression so closely that a user can do without the original publication. Repeating the same facts, by itself, is not enough under his analysis.
On the evidence described in the opinion, Szpunar said the relevant conditions do not appear to be met in this case: the example involved no access barrier, its wording was not recognisable as the article’s expression, and Google appeared to have safeguards. He also advised that the questions about AI training should be declared inadmissible because the case record did not establish that the articles were used to train Gemini. These are the adviser’s views, not findings in a final judgment.
Infographic 01 · Where the line runs
When a chatbot answer infringes a publisher's right
Advocate General Szpunar's test in Case C‑250/25 for chatbots that retrieve news articles in real time and reuse them in their answers.
Stays free
- Reporting the same facts. Nobody owns the news itself (pts 199–200).
- A short factual summary, presented differently (pt 208).
- An overview built from several sources, restructured, with links back (pts 208, 234).
- Individual words or very short extracts (pt 201).
Can infringe
- Getting around a paywall or anti-scraping block to fetch the article (pt 188).
- An answer that keeps the article’s structure and phrasing, even paraphrased, so readers can skip the original (pts 202, 205, 207).
- Systematically recognisable articles in answers to related questions: making available to the public (pts 213, 240).
The test, step by step
For a chatbot that fetches a news article live (RAG) and answers a user
- Is it an online use by a service in the EU?Yes for RAG answers to EU users, wherever the servers are (pts 165–169).
- Did the bot get in lawfully?No circumvention of effective technical measures (pt 188).
- Is the article’s form of expression recognisable in the answer, to the point of substitution?Side-by-side comparison; facts do not count (pts 196–209).
- Is the provider responsible?If inherent to its business model, or no reasonable measures such as respecting blocks and output filters (pts 221–222).
- Temporary copies during retrieval are then exempt under Art. 5(1) InfoSoc; the TDM exception does not apply to RAG (pts 179–189).
An Advocate General’s opinion, not a judgment. General information, not legal advice.
Sources: Opinion of AG Szpunar, C‑250/25 (provisional text), CURIA press release No 155/26 (3 Nov 2026). Point numbers refer to the provisional text.
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What the Test Means for Chatbot Answers
For everyday users, the opinion draws a boundary between asking AI to report information and receiving an answer that effectively substitutes for a publisher’s article. A chatbot may state the same underlying facts, on Szpunar’s reasoning, without automatically infringing the press publishers’ right. The risk is different if a service gets around a site’s restrictions or reproduces distinctive wording in a way that lets users skip the original.
If the Court adopts this approach, users could encounter answers that summarise information while linking to the reporting behind it, rather than answers that reproduce an article’s distinctive form. That is a possible practical consequence, not a requirement set out in a final ruling. The opinion also does not establish that every chatbot summary is lawful or that every publisher can block all use of its reporting.
For publishers and AI services, the dispute could shape how news content is accessed, quoted and licensed in AI-powered search and chat products. Publishers may gain a basis to challenge circumvention or near-copying, while the proposed distinction between facts and expression would not give them ownership of the news facts themselves. The final legal effect remains subject to the Court’s judgment and the Hungarian court’s application of the law.
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How the Gemini Dispute Reached Luxembourg
The EU press publishers’ right comes from Article 15 of the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. The legislation was designed to give publishers rights over certain online uses of press publications, with news aggregators such as Google News among the services discussed in the opinion. The question in this case is how that right applies to chatbot answers that draw on online articles.
Like Company brought its claim in Hungary. The Budapest regional court referred four questions to the EU Court of Justice: two about the alleged use of articles in training and two about their use in chatbot answers. Nine EU governments and the European Commission submitted written observations, and the hearing took place on March 10, 2026, according to the opinion.
The opinion distinguishes live retrieval from model training. It says Gemini could have summarised the dolphin article by retrieving the page from the web when prompted, a process known as retrieval-augmented generation, rather than because the article was in the model’s training data. The article appeared in July 2023; Gemini 1.0 launched in December 2023. Szpunar considered training use unsupported by the record and the training questions hypothetical. Separately, he discussed the EU text-and-data-mining exception, saying it covers training in principle, with rights holders able to opt out in a machine-readable way. That discussion was not his main answer to the case.
““the first generative AI case to reach the Court of Justice””
— Court of Justice of the European Union, press release No. 155/26
What the Opinion Does Not Decide
The Court of Justice has not issued its judgment. An Advocate General’s opinion is independent legal advice to the judges and does not bind them. The Court may follow it, adopt parts of its reasoning or reach a different conclusion. No judgment date has been announced.
The record also does not establish that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. Szpunar advised the Court not to answer the training questions because they were hypothetical; his additional comments about text-and-data mining were not a final ruling on the facts of this case. It remains unclear how the Court will address the separate questions about chatbot answers, or how the Hungarian court will apply the eventual judgment to Google’s conduct.
The Court’s Judgment Comes Next
The Court of Justice will issue its judgment in Case C‑250/25, after which the Budapest regional court will resolve the national dispute using the EU court’s interpretation. The Court has not set a date. Its statistics put the average duration of preliminary-reference cases at 16.9 months in 2025; that figure is a historical average, not a timetable for this case.
Until the judgment, Szpunar’s proposed line is guidance rather than settled law. The key points to watch are whether the Court treats bypassing access restrictions or recognisable reproduction as relevant tests, and what it says about the boundary between facts and protected expression. This article reports on a court opinion and is general information, not legal advice.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court ruled that Gemini infringed copyright?
No. Szpunar issued a nonbinding opinion, not a judgment. He said the conditions for infringement did not appear to be met in the example before him, but the Court of Justice has yet to decide the case.
When might a chatbot answer infringe publishers’ rights?
Under the adviser’s proposed test, relevant circumstances include a chatbot getting an article by bypassing access restrictions or reproducing its recognisable expression so extensively that users can do without the original. The same facts appearing in an answer would not, by themselves, meet that test.
Did the opinion decide whether AI training on news articles is lawful?
No. Szpunar advised that the training questions should be declared inadmissible because the record did not show the articles were used for training. His separate comments that text-and-data mining rules cover training in principle were additional observations, not a binding decision on this dispute.
What happens to the case now?
The Court of Justice must issue its judgment on the questions referred by the Hungarian court. The Budapest regional court will then decide the underlying case. No date for the EU court’s judgment has been set.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
