Judge Dismisses Major Portions of Lawsuit Over GitHub Copilot AI Coding Assistant

A US District Court judge in San Francisco has largely dismissed a class-action lawsuit against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI regarding the use of code samples to train GitHub Copilot. While the judge dismissed claims for restitution and unjust enrichment, he allowed the claim concerning breach of open-source license violations to proceed. InfoWorld reports:

The lawsuit, initially filed in November 2022, argued that GitHub's practice of training the Copilot AI on public code repositories violated the rights of numerous creators who posted their code under open-source licenses. The complaint (PDF) asserted that "Copilot ignores, violates, and removes the Licenses offered by thousands -- possibly millions -- of software developers, thereby accomplishing software piracy on an unprecedented scale."

In a decision first announced on June 24 and made public on July 5, Judge Jon S. Tigar of the California Northern District wrote,

"In sum, plaintiff's claims do not support the remedy they seek. Plaintiffs have failed to establish, as a matter of law, that restitution for any unjust enrichment is available as a measure of plaintiffs' damages for their breach of contract claims." He added, "The court dismisses plaintiffs' section 1202(b) claim, this time with prejudice. The Court declines to dismiss plaintiffs' claim for breach of contract of open-source license violations against all defendants. Finally, the court dismisses plaintiffs' request for monetary relief in the form of unjust enrichment, as well as plaintiffs' request for punitive damages."