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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 in some circumstances, including by bypassing access barriers or reproducing recognisable expression. He said the test does not appear to be met in the Gemini case before him; the opinion is nonbinding, and the Hungarian court will decide the dispute.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the Court of Justice of the European Union on Nov. 3 that chatbots that retrieve online news articles and reuse them in answers may infringe press publishers’ rights in certain circumstances. In Case C‑250/25, Like Company v Google Ireland, he said the relevant line is not the use of the same facts, but whether a service unlawfully accesses an article or reproduces its recognisable expression; his opinion is not binding on the court.
The dispute began after Hungarian publisher Like Company challenged Google’s use of its articles in the Gemini chatbot. One example involved a Hungarian article about a singer’s reported plan to bring dolphins to Lake Balaton. A user asked Gemini to summarise the article, and the chatbot returned a summary in Hungarian. Like Company says Google used its articles to train Gemini and reproduced or made them available through the chatbot between June 2023 and May 2024, according to the Court of Justice’s press release. Those are the publisher’s allegations, not findings established by the opinion.
Szpunar’s proposed test focuses on chatbot answers. A publisher’s rights may be infringed if a system obtains an article by getting around an access restriction, such as a paywall or anti-scraping measure, or if the answer carries enough of the article’s recognisable expression that readers can dispense with the original publication. Repeating facts alone would not meet that test, the opinion says. In the dolphin example, Szpunar considered that the conditions did not appear to be met: he identified no access barrier, no recognisable wording in the example answer and safeguards that Google appeared to have in place.
On AI training, the adviser recommended that the court reject the case’s two training questions as inadmissible because the record did not show that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. He discussed the issue separately and said, as a general matter, that EU text-and-data-mining rules may cover training, subject to rights holders’ ability to opt out in a machine-readable form. That discussion was not a ruling on whether Google used these articles for training.
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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Where Chatbot Reuse Crosses the Line
The proposed distinction matters to publishers, AI services and readers. If adopted, it would leave publishers free to report facts while giving them a possible legal claim when a chatbot bypasses restrictions or reproduces writing in a way that substitutes for the original article. The opinion does not grant publishers control over every answer that draws on reporting, nor does it decide what licence terms a company must accept.
For chatbot and AI-search operators, the analysis puts practical emphasis on how web content is accessed and how answers are written. Services may need to account for paywalls and anti-scraping controls and avoid answers that closely reproduce protected expression. For readers, the case could shape how AI summaries link to or distinguish themselves from the publications they draw on. These are potential consequences of the adviser’s reasoning, not requirements imposed by a final court judgment.
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How the Gemini Dispute Reached Luxembourg
Like Company, which operates several Hungarian news websites, sued Google in a Budapest court under the EU’s press publishers’ right. Article 15(1) of the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive gives publishers rights over certain online uses of press publications. The directive was adopted with services such as news aggregators in view; this case asks whether the right also applies to chatbot answers that retrieve articles in real time.
The Hungarian court referred four questions to the EU court: two concerning training and two concerning chatbot answers. The hearing took place on March 10, 2026, after written observations from nine EU governments and the European Commission, according to the opinion. Szpunar said the training questions lacked a sufficient factual basis, including because the article at issue was published in July 2023 and Gemini 1.0 was released in December that year. He considered live retrieval, rather than prior training on that article, a plausible explanation for the summary.
“repeatedly reproduced and made them available to the public through the Gemini chatbot”
— Like Company, as described in the Court of Justice press release
What the Opinion Does Not Decide
Szpunar’s opinion is advice to the Court of Justice, not a binding judgment. The court has not set a date for its ruling, and the Hungarian court will decide the underlying dispute after the EU court answers the referred questions. The adviser’s view that the apparent conditions for infringement were not met in the example does not settle every allegation or establish how the proposed test will be applied to other chatbot answers.
The record described in the opinion also does not establish that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. The adviser’s discussion of text and data mining was additional reasoning after he recommended that the training questions be dismissed; it should not be read as a finding about Google’s specific training data or as a final interpretation adopted by the court. The scope of any machine-readable opt-out and how it applies in particular cases remain questions for the relevant legal framework and future decisions.
Court Ruling and Hungarian Proceedings
The Court of Justice will now consider the Advocate General’s opinion and issue its judgment on the questions referred by the Hungarian court. No judgment date has been announced. The court’s 2025 statistics put the average time for preliminary-reference proceedings at 16.9 months, but that average does not determine when this case will be decided.
After the EU court rules, the Budapest court will apply its answers to Like Company’s claims against Google. Until then, the proposed test remains the adviser’s view rather than a final ruling on the publisher’s rights or Google’s liability.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court of Justice ruled that Gemini infringed copyright?
No. Advocate General Maciej Szpunar issued a nonbinding opinion. He said the conditions for infringement did not appear to be met in the example he considered, and the court has yet to issue its judgment.
What kind of chatbot use could infringe publishers’ rights under the opinion?
The adviser said infringement may arise if a chatbot obtains an article by bypassing an access restriction or reproduces recognisable expression so extensively that users can do without the original. Using the same facts alone would not be enough under the proposed test.
Did the opinion find that Google trained Gemini on Like Company’s articles?
No. Szpunar said the record did not support that claim and recommended that the court treat the training questions as inadmissible. His separate discussion of text-and-data-mining rules was not a finding about Google’s training data.
What happens next in the case?
The Court of Justice will issue a judgment on the Hungarian court’s questions. The Hungarian court will then apply the EU court’s answers to the dispute. No date for the EU judgment has been set.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
