Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

Background

The plaintiffs alleged that Meta copied their books to train its LLaMA language models. Meta moved to dismiss all claims except the claim alleging that this unauthorized copying itself constituted copyright infringement. The order addresses the plaintiffs’ other liability theories.

Claims and Analysis

The plaintiffs alleged that the LLaMA models were infringing derivative works because they could not function without expressive information taken from the books. The court rejected that theory, explaining that a derivative work must recast, transform, or adapt a preexisting work, and that the complaint did not plausibly describe the models as adaptations of the books.

The plaintiffs also alleged that every LLaMA output was an infringing derivative work and that Meta was secondarily liable for users’ outputs. The court held that the complaint did not identify the contents of any output or allege an output that recast, transformed, or adapted the plaintiffs’ books. The plaintiffs would need to allege and ultimately prove that outputs contained protected material from the books or were sufficiently similar to them.

The court dismissed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act claims under Sections 1202(a)(1) and 1202(b). It found no facts supporting the allegation that LLaMA distributed the books without their copyright-management information, and it found the Section 1202(a)(1) theory dependent on the inadequately pleaded derivative-work theory.

The court also dismissed the unfair-competition claim. To the extent that claim was based on direct copyright infringement, the court held it was preempted, meaning copyright law displaced the state-law claim. To the extent it relied on separate fraud or unfairness, the complaint did not adequately allege either.

The unjust-enrichment and negligence claims were also held preempted because they relied on rights protected by the Copyright Act. The court additionally stated that, even if the negligence claim were not preempted, the economic-loss doctrine would apply.

Disposition

The court granted Meta’s motion to dismiss. The order states that all the claims were dismissed with leave to amend except the negligence claim, which was dismissed with prejudice. The plaintiffs could file an amended complaint within 21 days, and any response would be due 21 days after the amended complaint was filed. The direct copyright-infringement claim concerning the copying of the books for LLaMA training was the claim left outside this motion.

Classification

This is a procedural order because it resolves a motion to dismiss under the pleading rules rather than deciding the ultimate merits of the surviving copyright-infringement claim.