Economic Analysis of Generative AI Copyright Claims

Retained by Joseph Saveri Law Firm, LLP

Vega Economics was retained to support the expert economist in Richard Kadrey, et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. (N.D. Cal. No. 3:23-cv-03417). Plaintiffs, who are copyright holders and book authors, brought this case alleging that the practices used by Defendant Meta Platforms, Inc. to train its Artificial Intelligence large language models infringe upon the authors’ registered copyrights under the Copyright Act.
 
The expert economist was retained by to analyze and opine on the impact of Meta’s alleged conduct on plaintiffs in the market for licensed book material for LLM training, the market for books sold to the public, the market for books due to the presence and sale of AI-generated books allegedly trained on plaintiffs’ works, and the harm to plaintiffs.
 
On March 10, 2025, plaintiffs filed a Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, on the grounds that: (1) Meta committed direct copyright infringement; and (2) Meta’s reproduction of plaintiffs’ copyrighted books without permission, including through peer-to-peer file sharing, is not fair use.
 
Plaintiffs’ quoted Vega's economic expert noting "downloading illegal, pirated copies of copyrighted works and then redistributing those same pirated copies en masse . . . to other users risks reducing demand for those works in the legal market," and "[s]uch conduct causes concrete harm to authors by diminishing demand for their copyrighted works." 

Plaintiffs' Notice of Motion and Motion for Partial Summary Judgement