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TL;DR
On Nov. 3, 2026, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice that AI chatbots can infringe press publishers’ rights in some circumstances, including by unlawfully accessing articles or reproducing their distinctive expression. He said the test does not appear to be met in Like Company’s dispute with Google over a Gemini summary. The opinion is nonbinding; the court has not set a date for its judgment.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the EU Court of Justice on Nov. 3 that chatbots may infringe press publishers’ rights when they retrieve and reuse online news articles, including if they bypass access controls or reproduce an article’s distinctive expression. In the case brought by Hungarian publisher Like Company against Google, however, he said the conditions for infringement did not appear to be met. His opinion is advisory, not a binding ruling.
The dispute began after Google’s Gemini chatbot produced a Hungarian summary of a Like Company article about a singer’s reported plan to bring dolphins to Lake Balaton. Like Company operates several Hungarian news portals and argues that Google used its articles to train Gemini and repeatedly reproduced them through chatbot answers between June 13, 2023, and May 31, 2024, according to the Court of Justice’s account of the case. Those allegations have not been established by a final court ruling.
Szpunar’s proposed test focuses on how a chatbot obtains and presents an article. An infringement may arise if a system accesses a publication unlawfully, such as by circumventing a paywall or anti-scraping measure, or if its answer preserves the article’s expression so recognisably that a user can avoid reading the original. Repeating the same underlying facts, without taking the article’s distinctive form of expression, would not by itself meet that test.
He said those conditions did not appear to apply to the example before him: the article was not protected by an access barrier, the sample answer did not appear to reproduce recognisable wording, and Google seemed to have safeguards. The Hungarian court will decide the facts and apply the law. The Court of Justice’s press release describes the case as the first generative AI matter to reach it.
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 Facts and Expression
The opinion could shape how publishers and AI companies assess the use of news in chatbot answers and AI search. If the Court adopts a similar approach, operators may need to pay attention not only to whether a system can find a page, but also to whether it accessed the page lawfully and whether its response substitutes for the original by echoing its wording.
For publishers, the proposed boundary offers a possible basis to challenge unauthorised access or close copying, while stopping short of giving them control over the underlying facts reported in an article. For AI services, it points toward practices such as respecting access restrictions and avoiding near-copies. Readers could see answers that synthesise information from multiple sources or direct them to publishers, though the opinion does not require any particular product design.
The practical effect remains uncertain. The Advocate General’s view is not binding, and the Court of Justice may accept, modify or reject it. Any ruling would also have to be applied to particular evidence about a service’s access methods and outputs.
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How the Gemini Dispute Reached Luxembourg
Like Company sued Google in Hungary under the press publishers’ right established by Article 15 of the 2019 EU Copyright Directive. The right was adopted to let publishers control or license certain online uses of press publications, including extracts used by news aggregators such as Google News. The dispute asks how that framework applies to generative AI answers.
The Budapest-area court referred four questions to the EU Court of Justice: two concerning alleged use of articles for AI training and two concerning chatbot answers. Nine EU governments and the European Commission submitted written observations, and the court held a hearing on March 10, 2026. The referral asks the EU court to interpret EU law; the Hungarian court retains the task of resolving the underlying case.
On the training questions, Szpunar’s main conclusion was procedural: he advised that they be declared inadmissible because the record did not show that Like Company’s articles were used to train Gemini. He noted that the dolphin article appeared in July 2023, while Gemini 1.0 launched in December 2023, and considered live retrieval a more plausible explanation for the summary. He also reasoned that training on dedicated computers is not the kind of online use covered by the press publishers’ right.
Separately, and explicitly for completeness, he discussed the EU text-and-data-mining exception. He considered AI training generally covered in principle, subject to rights holders’ ability to reserve their rights in a machine-readable way. That discussion is not a ruling on whether Google trained on Like Company material, and it is distinct from his recommendation to reject the training questions as inadmissible.
“Google used its articles to train Gemini and repeatedly reproduced and made them available to the public through the chatbot.”
— Like Company, as summarised in the Court of Justice press release
The Court Has Yet to Rule
The Advocate General’s opinion is not binding. The Court of Justice has not announced when it will issue its judgment, and its judges are not required to follow Szpunar’s recommendations. The Hungarian court must later decide how EU law applies to the evidence in Like Company’s case.
It also remains unresolved whether Google used any Like Company material to train Gemini. Szpunar said the referral contained no evidence supporting that claim and recommended that the training questions be treated as inadmissible. His additional discussion of text-and-data mining does not establish what data Google used or determine any separate copyright claim.
A Pending EU Court Judgment
The Court of Justice will consider the Advocate General’s opinion before delivering its judgment in Case C-250/25. No judgment date has been set. The court’s statistics put the average duration of preliminary-reference cases at 16.9 months in 2025, but that figure does not establish when this case will be decided.
After the EU court answers the questions about the law, the Hungarian court can continue the national proceedings and assess the parties’ evidence. Until then, the opinion provides guidance on the issues but does not settle whether Google or any other chatbot operator infringed publishers’ rights in this case.
Key Questions
Has the EU Court of Justice ruled against Google?
No. Advocate General Szpunar issued a nonbinding opinion. The Court of Justice has not yet delivered its judgment, and the Hungarian case remains to be decided.
When might a chatbot infringe a publisher’s rights?
Under the Advocate General’s proposed test, infringement may arise if a chatbot obtains an article unlawfully, such as by bypassing access controls, or reproduces its distinctive expression so closely that users can forgo the original. Repeating facts alone would not be enough.
Did the opinion establish that Google trained Gemini on Like Company articles?
No. Szpunar said the record did not show that the articles were in Gemini’s training data and recommended that the training questions be declared inadmissible. His separate comments on text-and-data mining were general legal analysis, not a finding about Google’s data.
What happens after the Advocate General’s opinion?
The Court of Justice will issue a judgment on the questions referred by the Hungarian court. It has not announced a date. The Hungarian court will then apply the EU court’s interpretation to the dispute.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
