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TL;DR
On Nov. 3, 2026, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice that chatbots can infringe press publishers’ rights in some circumstances, including by bypassing access barriers or reproducing recognisable expression. He said the test does not appear to be met in Like Company’s dispute with Google over a Gemini summary; the opinion is nonbinding, and the court has not set a judgment date.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the European Union’s top court on Nov. 3 that chatbots that retrieve and reuse online news articles may, in some circumstances, infringe press publishers’ rights. In the dispute over a Gemini summary of a Hungarian article about dolphins, however, he said the available facts do not appear to meet his proposed test; the opinion is not binding, and the Court of Justice of the European Union has yet to rule.
The case, Like Company v Google Ireland (C‑250/25), began after Hungarian publisher Like Company challenged Google’s use of its articles. According to the court’s press release, Like Company alleges that Google used its publications to train Gemini and repeatedly reproduced or made them available through the chatbot between June 13, 2023, and May 31, 2024. Those are the publisher’s allegations, not findings by the court.
The immediate example concerns a July 2023 article about a singer’s reported plan to bring dolphins to Lake Balaton. A user asked Gemini to summarise the article in Hungarian, and the chatbot returned a summary. Szpunar’s opinion draws a distinction between the article’s underlying facts and its protected expression: reporting the same facts alone is not enough to establish infringement. The risk arises, he said, if a chatbot obtains material unlawfully—such as by bypassing a paywall or anti-scraping measure—or reproduces the article’s distinctive expression so recognisably that a user can do without the original publication.
Szpunar said those conditions do not appear to apply to the example before him: the article was not behind an access barrier, its wording was not recognisable in the answer, and Google appeared to have safeguards. The Hungarian court will assess the case in light of the EU court’s eventual ruling and the evidence before it.
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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A Narrower Right Over Chatbot Answers
The opinion sketches a possible boundary for AI search and answer tools: publishers may have a claim when a service gets around restrictions or substitutes recognisable expression for access to the source, but not simply because a chatbot reports facts also covered by a news article. That distinction matters to publishers seeking compensation and to technology companies deciding how to retrieve, quote, summarise, and link to web content.
For readers, the approach could leave room for AI-generated summaries while giving publishers an argument against answers that function as close substitutes for their work. It does not settle how broad that protection will be. The opinion is advice to the court, not a final judgment, and the underlying dispute still requires a decision by the Hungarian court.
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How the Gemini Dispute Reached Luxembourg
Like Company operates several Hungarian online publications and brought its claim before the Budapest regional court. That court asked the EU Court of Justice to interpret the press publishers’ right set out in Article 15(1) of the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. The right was adopted in part to let publishers control and license certain online uses of press material, including by news aggregators.
The Hungarian court sent four questions to Luxembourg: two about AI training and two about chatbot answers. According to Szpunar’s opinion, the training questions should be dismissed as inadmissible because the record does not establish that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. He pointed to the article’s publication date and Gemini 1.0’s later release, and said the example appears consistent with live retrieval from the web, rather than use of the article in model training.
Szpunar also said the press publishers’ right concerns online use by online services and does not cover model training performed on dedicated computers. In a separate discussion “for the sake of completeness,” he considered the EU text-and-data-mining exception, which he said may generally cover training, subject to rights holders’ ability to opt out in a machine-readable form. That discussion is not a finding that Google trained Gemini on Like Company’s material.
The Court Has Yet to Decide
Szpunar’s opinion is not binding. The Court of Justice may follow it, modify its reasoning, or reach a different conclusion, and no date for the final judgment has been announced. The timing and eventual outcome of the Hungarian proceedings are also unknown.
The record described in the opinion does not establish that Like Company’s articles were part of Gemini’s training data. Nor does the opinion resolve every question about how the proposed test applies to other chatbot outputs, different access restrictions, or summaries that closely track an article’s structure or wording. The publisher’s allegations about training and repeated reproduction remain allegations unless established in court.
EU Court Judgment Still Ahead
The Court of Justice will issue its judgment in Case C‑250/25 after considering the Advocate General’s advice and the parties’ arguments. The court has not published a decision date. Its statistics show that preliminary references took an average of 16.9 months in 2025, but that figure does not establish a schedule for this case.
After the EU court answers the legal questions, the Hungarian court will decide the dispute using the facts and evidence before it. Until then, the opinion offers guidance on the possible reach of press publishers’ rights over chatbot answers, not a final ruling on Google’s liability or on AI training in this case.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court of Justice ruled against Google?
No. Advocate General Szpunar issued a nonbinding opinion on Nov. 3, 2026. The court’s final judgment is still pending.
When might a chatbot summary infringe publishers’ rights?
Under Szpunar’s proposed test, a chatbot may infringe if it bypasses access restrictions or reproduces protected expression so recognisably that users can avoid the original publication. Repeating the same facts alone would not be enough.
Did Szpunar find that Gemini was trained on Like Company’s articles?
No. He said the record did not support that claim and recommended dismissing the training questions as inadmissible. His separate discussion of EU text-and-data-mining rules was not a finding that Google used these articles for training.
What happens after the opinion?
The Court of Justice will issue a judgment on the legal questions. The Hungarian court will then decide the publisher’s case; neither court has announced a date for its next decision.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
