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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 if they access articles unlawfully or reproduce their distinctive expression so extensively that users can forgo the original. He said those conditions do not appear to be met in the dispute over a Gemini summary of a Hungarian article, and the opinion is not a final ruling.
EU Court of Justice Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said on Nov. 3, 2026, that AI chatbots may infringe press publishers’ rights when they retrieve and reuse articles in answers, including by bypassing access restrictions or reproducing distinctive expression. His nonbinding opinion in Case C‑250/25 concerns Google’s Gemini chatbot and a Hungarian publisher’s complaint; Szpunar said the conditions for infringement do not appear to be met in the example before him.
The case was brought by Like Company, which operates Hungarian news portals, against Google Ireland. The publisher alleges that Google used its articles to train Gemini and that the chatbot reproduced and made them available to the public from June 13, 2023, to May 31, 2024. Those are allegations in the dispute, not findings by the Court of Justice.
The specific example involved a July 2023 article about a singer’s reported plan to bring dolphins to a pool on the Tihany peninsula at Lake Balaton. A user asked Gemini to summarize the article in Hungarian. The opinion says a chatbot answer could infringe if the service obtained the article unlawfully, such as by circumventing a paywall or an anti-scraping measure, or if it carried over the article’s expression so recognizably that a reader could do without the original.
Szpunar said repeating the same facts is not enough by itself: the relevant issue is the article’s protected form of expression and how much of it appears in the answer. Applying his proposed test to the example, he found no apparent access barrier or recognizable wording in the answer, and said Google appeared to have safeguards. The Hungarian court will decide the underlying dispute.
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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The Line Between Summary and Substitution
The opinion offers a possible framework for disputes over AI services that search the web and generate answers from news material. If the Court adopts it, publishers may have a basis to challenge answers that bypass technical restrictions or reproduce distinctive wording in a way that substitutes for reading an article. The opinion does not give publishers control over facts or every summary of reporting.
For chatbot operators, the proposed distinction makes both how a source is accessed and what the answer reproduces relevant. For readers, it could affect whether AI search products provide short factual summaries, include more links to original reporting, or face limits on the material they can use. Those outcomes are possibilities, not changes established by this opinion.
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A 2019 Press Right Meets Chatbots
The dispute turns on the press publishers’ right introduced by the EU’s 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. The right lets publishers control certain online uses of press publications. As Szpunar’s opinion recounts, lawmakers had news aggregators such as Google News in mind when adopting it; the current case asks how that right applies to generative chatbots.
The Budapest regional court referred four questions to the EU Court of Justice: two on AI training and two on chatbot answers. The hearing took place on March 10, 2026, and nine EU governments and the European Commission submitted written observations, according to the opinion. The Court describes the case as the first generative AI case to reach it.
On training, Szpunar advised that the questions should be declared inadmissible because the record did not establish that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. He said the example instead appeared to involve retrieval-augmented generation: Gemini fetched material from a website to answer a user’s query. Separately, he discussed training “for the sake of completeness,” saying text and data mining rules may generally cover it, subject to rights holders’ ability to opt out in a machine-readable way. That discussion is not a ruling on whether the publisher’s articles were used for training.
The Court Has Yet to Rule
An Advocate General’s opinion is not binding on the Court of Justice. The judges may follow it, depart from it, or reach a different conclusion. No date for the final judgment has been announced, and the Hungarian court—not Szpunar—will ultimately resolve the publisher’s claims in the national proceedings.
The opinion does not establish that Like Company’s material appeared in Gemini’s training data or that Google unlawfully accessed or reproduced the article. It also does not settle how the proposed test would apply to other AI products, different kinds of summaries, or other technical access controls. The eventual judgment and its application by national courts remain open.
Judges Consider the Referral
The Court of Justice will now consider the case and issue its judgment in response to the Hungarian court’s questions. No judgment date has been set. The Court’s statistics show that preliminary references took an average of 16.9 months in 2025, but that figure does not determine the timetable for this case.
After the EU court answers the legal questions, proceedings in Hungary can continue with the guidance it provides. Until then, Szpunar’s proposed approach is advice to the judges, not a final rule governing Google or other chatbot providers.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court ruled that Gemini infringed the publisher’s rights?
No. Szpunar’s opinion is nonbinding, and the Court of Justice has not issued its judgment. He said the conditions for infringement do not appear to be met in the example discussed.
When might a chatbot answer infringe a publisher’s rights?
Under Szpunar’s proposed test, infringement may arise if a chatbot reaches an article unlawfully, such as by bypassing a paywall or anti-scraping measure, or reproduces its distinctive expression so extensively that users can do without the original. Reporting the same facts alone would not meet that test.
Did Szpunar find that Gemini trained on Like Company’s articles?
No. He advised that the training questions were inadmissible because the record did not show that the articles were used for training. He considered the example more consistent with live retrieval of the article to answer a user’s query.
What happens next in the case?
The EU Court of Justice will issue a judgment answering the Hungarian court’s referral. No date has been announced; the Hungarian court will then decide the underlying dispute in light of the EU court’s guidance.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
