Advocate General Maciej Szpunar delivered his opinion on November 3, 2026 in Case C-250/25, Like Company v Google. It is the first generative AI case to reach the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Like Company, a Hungarian operator of web portals, sued Google in Budapest. It claims Google used its articles to train the Gemini models and reproduced them through the Gemini chatbot between June 13, 2023 and May 31, 2024. The Hungarian court referred four questions to Luxembourg.
On training, the Advocate General advises the Court to declare the two questions inadmissible. There is no evidence the articles were used for training, and training is not an online use of press publications. For completeness, he suggests that training on protected content is, as a rule, permitted under the EU text and data mining exception.
On answers, he says a chatbot that retrieves a press article in real time, reuses it and gives the result to a user can infringe the publisher's right in certain circumstances. Two factors decide it.
Access: whether the chatbot reached the article unlawfully, for example by getting around a paywall or anti-scraping measures.
Expression: whether the answer only reports facts, or reuses the article's wording so recognisably that the user no longer needs the original.
The publisher's right protects the form of expression, not the facts. The provider is liable where such use is inherent to its business model or where it has not put credible measures in place against it.
The opinion is not binding. The judges have begun deliberating, and judgment will follow later.
Why this matters
If the Court follows the opinion, the test for AI answers in the EU becomes access and wording, not training. Publishers would gain leverage through paywalls and technical blocks. AI search products would need answers that summarise facts rather than restate articles.
Sources: CJEU press release No 155/26.
This article is not legal advice.
