The Copilot Conspiracy: Claims of Collaboration and Legal Breaches by Tech Giants

VIII. CLAIMS FOR RELIEF

COUNT XI

CIVIL CONSPIRACY

Common Law

(Against All Defendants)

235. Plaintiffs and the Class hereby repeat and incorporate by reference each preceding and succeeding paragraph as though fully set forth herein.

236. On information and belief, Microsoft, GitHub, OpenAI, and the Individual Defendants have worked together to create Copilot. In creating Copilot, Defendants willfully avoided determining whether and how Copilot’s training and Output may violate the rights of Plaintiffs and the Class and other stakeholders. This is because Defendants understood that through Copilot they would be engaging in a variety of unlawful conduct. Defendants conduct resulted in violations of Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s rights as set forth herein.

237. On information and belief, OpenAI derives a financial or other valuable benefit from the sale of Copilot. In exchange, OpenAI provided Microsoft an exclusive license to use its GPT-3 language model.

238. On information and belief, Microsoft derives a financial benefit from sales of Copilot through payments or other form of compensation in exchange for GitHub’s and OpenAI’s use of Azure to run Copilot.

239. GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI agreed to a common plan or design to create, sell, and run Copilot to commit and conceal the following tortious acts:

a. Violations of Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s rights under the DMCA Section 1202;

b. Tortious interference in Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s contractual relations with users of their code;

c. Passing off Copilot’s Output as originating either from Copilot itself or from Defendants;

d. Unfair competition with Plaintiffs and the Class by releasing and operating Copilot; and

e. Privacy violations, namely violation of the CCPA and negligent handling of personal information.