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Maciej Szpunar told the Court of Justice of the European Union on Tuesday that a chatbot answer can infringe the if the bot got to the article by getting around a paywall or a bot block, or if the answer copies the article's structure and phrasing so closely that a reader "no longer needs the original." Reporting facts stays free.
In Like Company v Google, over Gemini, he found the Hungarian publisher's article probably meets neither test.
The opinion is advisory, and judges have started deliberating with no date set. He advised treating the questions on AI training as inadmissible, then answered them anyway.
If the court follows him, an EU publisher's best protection becomes a working technical block.
An EU court adviser says chatbot answers can infringe press rights in two ways
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar told the Court of Justice of the European Union on Tuesday that a chatbot answer can infringe the press publishers' right if the bot got to the article by getting around a paywall or a bot block, or if the answer copies the article's structure and phrasing so closely that a reader "no longer needs the original." Reporting facts stays free. In Like Company v Google, over Gemini, he found the Hungarian publisher's article probably meets neither test.
The opinion is advisory, and judges have started deliberating with no date set. He advised treating the questions on AI training as inadmissible, then answered them anyway. If the court follows him, an EU publisher's best protection becomes a working technical block. SourcesC
Sources
This story ran in the Morning Brief of November 4th 2026.