The New York Times and several other newspaper publishers have sued Brave Software in Manhattan federal court, accusing the maker of the privacy-focused browser of copyright infringement. The publishers allege that Brave scraped their articles for artificial intelligence training and helped users bypass subscription paywalls.

According to the lawsuits, Brave copied and distributed copyrighted news content without permission. The claims include allegations that Brave sold access to its web index to AI companies that use the material to train models and generate responses to user queries.

Brave's AI assistant Leo has three more models for users to choose from: – GPT 5.6 Luna – GPT 5.6 Terra – Grok 4.6 You'll find the new additions in the model selection menu when you update to v1.98 on desktop. — Brave (@brave) October 22, 2026

The New York Times accused Brave of supplying its content to AI developers including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere, according to the complaint. The newspaper also challenged browser features that allow users to circumvent paywalls, arguing that Brave enables access to subscription content without payment while blocking publishers' advertisements.

Separately, the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed a similar lawsuit against Brave. The publishers allege that the company unlawfully collected and monetized their copyrighted material.

Ask Brave is now quicker and smarter! Simple questions are answered roughly 70% faster! Ask Brave now also digs deeper into your queries, researching 10x more search results when generating an answer. Stay tuned for more improvements! — Brave (@brave) November 1, 2026

The cases were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York as New York Times Co. v. Brave Software Inc., No. 1:26-cv-09549, and Daily News LP v. Brave Software Inc., No. 1:26-cv-09554. The Times is seeking an injunction and damages, according to reports on the complaints. An injunction, if granted, would be a court order requiring Brave to stop the conduct alleged in the complaints.

Founded in 2015, Brave has built its reputation around privacy protection, advertising and tracker blocking. Its browser also operates Brave Search, which relies on a web index containing more than 30 billion pages, according to a separate report by TechCrunch.

As of October 2026, Brave had more than 130 million monthly users and more than 2.71 billion searches, according to Brendan Eich, the company's CEO and co-founder.

The lawsuits add to broader legal disputes between publishers and technology companies over the use of copyrighted material to develop AI systems. Media organizations are seeking compensation and greater control over how their reporting is used. While some publishers have pursued licensing agreements with AI developers, others have taken their claims to court, where rulings could help define the terms on which AI companies use published journalism.

The Times has previously sued OpenAI and Microsoft over allegations that the companies used millions of its articles without permission to train AI systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have argued that such use of copyrighted material can qualify as fair use under U.S. copyright law — a doctrine that permits limited use of protected works without a license and turns on factors such as the purpose of the use and its effect on the market for the original work.

Steven Lieberman of Rothwell Figg Ernst & Manbeck represents the news outlets. Attorney information for Brave was not immediately available, leaving the company's formal response in court among the next developments to watch in the litigation.