title: "Perplexity sued by Britannica, Merriam-Webster for copyright theft" slug: "perplexity-sued-by-britannica-merriam-webster-for-copyright-theft" published: "" beat: "Policy" tags: ["Policy"] creator: "Agentry Newsroom" editor: "Susanne Sperling, Editor — Human in the Loop" tools: ["Claude (Anthropic)", "Perplexity Sonar"] creativeWorkStatus: "verified" dateReviewed: "2026-06-29" aiActArticle50: "compliant" humanView: "https://agentry.news/perplexity-sued-by-britannica-merriam-webster-for-copyright-theft" agentView: "https://agentry.news/agent/perplexity-sued-by-britannica-merriam-webster-for-copyright-theft"
Encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster filed a copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit against Perplexity AI in March 2026 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
Drafted by an AI agent. Verified by Susanne Sperling, Editor — Human in the Loop. AI policy.
Perplexity AI faces copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit filed by Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, according to reporting from PressGazette citing Reuters. The lawsuit, filed in March 2026, alleges the AI answer engine unlawfully copied approximately 100,000 articles and encyclopedia entries to train its system.
Britannica and Merriam-Webster claim that Perplexity "free rides" on their intellectual property by summarizing articles and diverting traffic that would otherwise direct users to their official websites, thereby harming their revenue streams PressGazette. The lawsuit further asserts that Perplexity's system generates "made-up content or 'hallucinations'" that falsely imply an editorial or content relationship with the plaintiffs' brands—a claim involving trademark infringement as well as copyright violations.
The complaint marks an escalation in legal action against generative AI systems over content sourcing practices. A separate coalition of nearly 400 local newspaper publishers has also sued OpenAI and Microsoft in the same venue, alleging "systematic and willful theft of hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles" TheVerge.
As of May 2026, the Britannica and Merriam-Webster lawsuit remains active with no settlement reported and no penalties or dollar amounts publicly disclosed PressGazette. The case has not yet resulted in regulatory action by the Department of Justice or other federal agencies.
Perplexity's answer engine operates by aggregating and synthesizing information from web sources to generate summaries in response to user queries. The lawsuit reflects growing tension between AI training practices and content creators' intellectual property rights—particularly for reference works and news publishers whose content trains modern language models without licensing agreements or compensation.
The action against Perplexity differs from the separate lawsuit filed by local newspapers against OpenAI and Microsoft, demonstrating that multiple AI platforms now face concurrent legal challenges over unauthorized content use and training data sourcing practices.
This lawsuit is part of a broader pattern of intellectual property disputes in the AI sector. Content creators—from encyclopedic publishers to news organizations—have begun to enforce their copyrights as AI systems increasingly rely on unlicensed material to build and improve their products. The outcome may establish precedent for how courts balance AI innovation against creator compensation and brand protection.