Authors Beat NVIDIA Dismissal Attempt in Copyright Lawsuit

Photo Credit: Mariia Shalabaieva

Despite the Supreme Court’s Cox v. Sony Music decision – and the subsequent end of multiple contributory infringement suits – a federal judge has denied NVIDIA’s attempt to dismiss a related claim in its copyright showdown with authors.

The presiding judge just recently rejected several dismissal arguments from NVIDIA, which did, however, manage to beat a vicarious infringement claim. Taking a step back for a moment, the overarching courtroom confrontation, Nazemian v. NVIDIA, kicked off in 2024.

And as DMN exclusively reported, the author plaintiffs amended their high-stakes class action closer to 2026’s start, adding, among a number of other claims and additional allegedly infringed books, allegations concerning Anna’s Archive.

Last month, that controversial shadow library was slapped with a $322 million default judgment (a massive award that will prove decidedly difficult to collect) in a case centering on its alleged Spotify hack.

In their amended NVIDIA complaint, the authors suggested that the chipmaking giant might have coordinated with Anna’s Archive to obtain all manner of pirated books. UMG-partnered NVIDIA, for its part, refuted the claims.

(Without retreading too much ground here, the amended action alleged that NVIDIA had, via AI-model-development tools for third parties, “provided customers with ‘scripts to automatically download and preprocess’” allegedly pirated media collections.)

The defendant also moved to dismiss the amended suit, and in support of its push to do away with the contributory infringement claim, it submitted a supplemental brief addressing Cox v. Sony Music.

As many already know, the Supreme Court in Cox unanimously ruled that a service provider could be held contributorily liable for users’ alleged infringement if it induced or tailored its offering to the infringement.

Consequently, NVIDIA in its brief emphasized the authors’ purported failure to allege the promotion of the relevant products “as a tool to download copyrighted content.”

“The Cox inquiry is whether the service is capable of substantial noninfringing uses—not whether every conceivable use of the service is noninfringing,” NVIDIA wrote when taking aim at the plaintiffs’ alleged hypothetical infringement examples.

The authors, for their part, filed a brief maintaining that the Supreme Court had “specifically reaffirmed that it is contributory infringement to provide software designed to distribute copyrighted materials.”

“Cox would have been a different case if the defendant had delivered, along with their generalized internet service, software that automatically downloaded pirated movies or otherwise specifically directed its subscribers to pirate sites. That is, in essence, what NVIDIA is alleged to have done here,” the authors continued.

Now, as initially noted, a federal judge has sided with the authors by determining that they “have adequately alleged contributory infringement.”

“Knowledge of a product’s capability to be used for infringement is insufficient absent awareness by the defendant of actual infringing activity by third parties utilizing the product,” Judge Jon S. Tigar wrote.

“In short, Plaintiffs have alleged that NVIDIA knew that its scripts and other assistance were directly contributing to infringement by third parties,” the court continued. “This satisfies the knowledge element.”

On the “tailored to infringement” front, the judge agreed with the authors’ position “that the scripts and material assistance provided by NVIDIA to its customers is the service tailored to infringement, as it had no purpose except to infringe.”

Finally, Judge Tigar did dismiss the aforementioned vicarious claim with leave to amend. In brief, the authors didn’t “plausibly allege that NVIDIA had the legal right or practical ability to stop users from obtaining or using infringing materials.”