In Toronto Star Newspapers Limited v. OpenAI Inc., the Ontario Superior Court issued a jurisdiction decision that quietly sets up one of Canada’s most important AI–copyright cases. The Toronto Star and other media organizations allege that OpenAI copied and used their articles without permission to train its models. OpenAI attempted to stop the case at the threshold, arguing that Ontario courts had no authority because the company is based elsewhere and the training occurred abroad.
The Court disagreed. It found a “real and substantial connection” between the alleged infringement and Ontario, noting that the harm is felt in Canada and that OpenAI’s products operate and generate outputs here. That was enough to ground jurisdiction. Importantly, the Court did not decide whether training an AI model on copyrighted journalism is lawful, whether fair dealing could apply, or whether outputs amount to infringement. It simply allowed the lawsuit to proceed.
The decision matters because it signals that global AI developers cannot rely on foreign headquarters to avoid Canadian copyright litigation. Now the case moves to the merits stage, where the Court will confront foundational questions: Is AI training a reproduction? How does fair dealing apply to machine learning? And what responsibilities do developers have when ingesting large volumes of protected Canadian content? Whatever the ultimate outcome, the jurisdiction ruling ensures those answers will be shaped in a Canadian courtroom.
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