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The developers suing over GitHub Copilot got dealt a major blow in court

Digital photo collage of a judge with gavel whose hands has too many fingers.
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

A judge has tossed nearly all of the claims a group of developers brought against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI in a copyright lawsuit filed in 2022, as reported earlier by The Register. In a court order unsealed last week, a California judge left only two claims standing: one that accuses the companies of an open-source license violation and another that alleges breach of contract.

The original lawsuit made 22 claims against the trio, accusing them of violating copyright laws by allowing the AI-powered GitHub Copilot coding assistant to train on developers’ work. Microsoft, the owner of GitHub, uses OpenAI’s technology to power the tool. All three companies asked the court to throw out the lawsuit in January, but Judge Jon Tigar denied…

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