Advocate General Maciej Szpunar stated on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, that Google’s Gemini chatbot may infringe press publishers’ copyright when it reuses articles to answer users, delivering the opinion in a case brought by Hungarian website operator Like Company against Google at the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The court follows the majority of its advisers’ opinions and is due to rule in the coming months, while the opinion itself is non-binding. One report put a binding decision in early 2027, noting that the court typically rules several months after such an opinion.
Szpunar Defines Copyright Limits for AI Answers
Chatbot answers can fall under publishers’ reproduction right, Szpunar said, when the system gets around paywalls or other technical barriers, or when it reuses the form of expression of that publication in a recognisable manner
. In the wording carried by Economic Times, When an LLM-driven chatbot retrieves a publication from a press publisher’s website, reuses that publication to generate an answer, and provides that answer to the user, the press publisher’s right may be infringed in certain circumstances.
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Copyright does not protect the “mere facts” in press reports, he said, keeping facts free.
Using copyrighted material to train large language models is, in his words, freely permitted under the text and data mining exception.
Google Accepts Training Terms but Contests Outputs
A Google spokesperson said the company acknowledged the opinion’s recognition that EU law permits AI training on publicly available information, calling the text and data mining exceptions vital for Europe’s competitiveness and AI development
. Gemini learns linguistic patterns to create original outputs rather than replicating content, the spokesperson added, noting that publishers have controls, including the ability to opt out.
A ruling against Google could force the company to pay fees for such content, the Reuters-based account noted, which could help online media that have watched traffic fall as AI-written summaries displace search results with links.
Like Company Brings First Generative AI Case to Luxembourg
Like Company alleges that between June 13, 2023, and February 7, 2024, Google reproduced and made its content available without authorization in case C-250/25, which is the first before the EU court to address generative AI and copyright directly. The Budapest Metropolitan Court sent four preliminary questions to the CJEU in April 2025, according to Odipi.
Google has argued that Gemini’s responses reach no “new public” and that the tool is not an information database, while those questions cover whether a chatbot’s partial reproduction of protected content is a communication to the public,
whether training counts as reproduction, and whether the text and data mining exception applies.
Court Ruling Expected in the Coming Months
Google and other AI developers would choose among licensing deals with thousands of publishers, technical filters on news material, or the risk of fines under a binding ruling in line with the opinion, according to one report. One report said Google had not yet issued a formal response to the adviser’s opinion, while the Reuters-based account carried the spokesperson’s statement quoted above.
Publishers’ complaints have already reached EU and national antitrust regulators, and the court’s ruling is expected in the coming months.