Kadrey v Meta Platforms Inc
| Case Name | Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Docket | 3:23-cv-03417-VC |
| Court | U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California |
| Judge | Hon. Vince Chhabria |
| Filed | July 7, 2023 |
| Plaintiffs | Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and other authors |
| Defendant | Meta Platforms, Inc. |
| Claims | Copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, DMCA violations |
| Status | Active — Fourth Amended Complaint allowed April 2026 |
Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc. is a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a group of authors against Meta Platforms, alleging that Meta used pirated copies of their books from shadow libraries to train its LLaMA AI models.
Allegations
The plaintiffs allege that Meta copied their copyrighted books without authorization and used them as training data for its LLaMA large language models. The case was filed alongside similar lawsuits against OpenAI and other AI companies in the Northern District of California.
In April 2026, Judge Vince Chhabria reluctantly granted the plaintiffs' motion to file a Fourth Amended Complaint, adding a contributory copyright infringement claim related to Meta's alleged torrenting of copyrighted books from shadow libraries. The court expressed concern about the expanding scope of the litigation but allowed the amendment to proceed.
Procedural History
- July 7, 2023 — Initial complaint filed
- November 2023 — First Amended Complaint filed
- February 2024 — Second Amended Complaint filed
- 2025 — Third Amended Complaint
- April 2026 — Fourth Amended Complaint allowed, adding contributory infringement claim
Significance
Kadrey v. Meta is one of the lead cases in the wave of AI copyright litigation. It addresses novel questions about whether training AI models on copyrighted works constitutes fair use, and whether the use of torrented/pirated training data creates additional liability beyond direct infringement.
See Also
- April 6, 2026 — Fourth Amended Complaint Allowed
- Carreyrou v Anthropic PBC
- Businessing LLC v Runway AI Inc
- Beaulier v NVIDIA et al