In two decisions issued within a week, Meta won two summary judgment motions in defending the copyright and DMCA claims against it related to training its Llama models. The first decision, released June 25, 2025, in Kadrey v Meta Platforms, Inc, denied the plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment and granting Meta’s motion for partial summary judgment. The reasons for decision, which followed on the heals of a summary judgment win for Anthropic in another AI copyright infringement case, summarized the court’s holding as follows:
In this case, because Meta’s use of the works of these thirteen authors is highly transformative, the plaintiffs needed to win decisively on the fourth factor to win on fair use. See, e.g., Perfect 10, 508 F.3d at 1168 (fair use where secondary use was “significant[ly] transformative” and fourth factor “favor[ed] neither party”). And to stave off summary judgment, they needed to create a genuine issue of material fact as to that factor. Because the issue of market dilution is so important in this context, had the plaintiffs presented any evidence that a jury could use to find in their favor on the issue, factor four would have needed to go to a jury. Or perhaps the plaintiffs could even have made a strong enough showing to win on the fair use issue at summary judgment. But the plaintiffs presented no meaningful evidence on market dilution at all. Absent such evidence and in light of Meta’s evidence, the fourth factor can only favor Meta. Therefore, on this record, Meta is entitled to summary judgment on its fair use defense to the claim that copying these plaintiffs’ books for use as LLM training data was infringement.
The second decision issued on June 27, 2025 dismissed the DMCA claim including for the following reasons:
The plaintiffs’ DMCA claim fails because, as held in the previous order, Meta’s copying must be deemed fair use as a matter of law based on the evidence presented at summary judgment. The plaintiffs’ DMCA claim is brought under 17 U.S.C. § 1202(b)(1). As relevant here, that provision prohibits the intentional removal of copyright management information by one who knows or has reason to know that the removal will “induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under this title.” Meanwhile, the Copyright Act provides that anything that is a fair use “is not an infringement of copyright.” 17 U.S.C. § 107; see also Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., 815 F.3d 1145, 1152–53 (9th Cir. 2016). So because Meta’s copying was not an infringement, its removal of CMI could not have furthered an act of infringement.
Reading § 1202(b) to not apply where the underlying act of infringement is a fair use also makes sense for two nontextual reasons. First, this reading is more consistent with the overall purpose and structure of copyright law. It does not make sense that Congress would have wanted to exempt secondary users who make a fair use from infringement liability, only to open them back up to DMCA liability if they removed some boilerplate in doing so. Second, § 1202 can also give rise to criminal liability where the CMI removal is willful and done for commercial purposes with actual (rather than constructive) knowledge that it will further an act of infringement. 17 U.S.C. §§ 1202(b), 1204(a). It is inconceivable that criminal liability would attach to an act that was done in furtherance of a noninfringing fair use.
