News Corp Claims Brave Software Stole Journalist Work

News Corp has filed a countersuit against Brave Software, accusing the tech company of copyright infringement. News Corp alleges that Brave has been systematically scraping, copying, and reselling copyrighted material from its publications without authorization. This content has reportedly been sold to artificial intelligence companies, directly competing with News Corp's own licensing programs.

The lawsuit details that Brave's practices allegedly go beyond typical search engine functions. News Corp claims Brave masks its web crawlers, making them undetectable by publishers, and provides lengthy content summaries or verbatim copies to enterprise clients, primarily AI firms. This business model, described by News Corp as "theft by a masked intruder," contrasts with lawful search engine operations that offer brief snippets and links to original sources.

The dispute originated from a February 2025 cease-and-desist letter sent by News Corp. Brave responded with its own lawsuit, asserting it merely indexed publicly available content. News Corp is seeking a judicial declaration of copyright infringement, a permanent injunction to halt the alleged infringement, the destruction of infringing databases, and monetary damages.