Brave and News Corp are now suing each other
The case was already open
Brave filed against News Corporation and its subsidiaries in the Northern District of California in May 2026. August's development is News Corp's answer to it.
Coverage describing this as News Corp suing Brave inverts the sequence. The party that opened the case is Brave; News Corp's counterclaim sits inside the same docket number, which is why it does not appear as a new case.
"Brave Software, Inc. v. News Corporation (3:26-cv-04758) / District Court, N.D. California"
An earlier round was dropped, not decided
The same parties had a case in 2025 that ended by joint stipulation, without a ruling. It was dismissed without prejudice, which left both sides free to litigate again.
That history is the context for reading the current filing. This is a resumption between parties who already tried once, not a first move.
"Date Filed: March 12, 2025"／"Date Terminated: June 10, 2025"
Reddit's DMCA claim survived, which is not a win
What the motion to dismiss ruling actually decided
The court predominantly denied the motions to dismiss. A denial means the claims are adequately pleaded and the case moves forward — it decides nothing about the merits.
The gap between "survived dismissal" and "won" is where most reporting on this case goes wrong. Nothing has been proven; the parties have been told they may proceed to prove it.
"For the foregoing reasons, the Court predominantly denies the motions to dismiss."
The claim is about access controls, not copying
Reddit's cause of action is DMCA section 1201, the anti-circumvention provision. It concerns defeating technical measures that control access to a work, rather than reproducing the work itself.
This is the more consequential detail for anyone scraping the web. A 1201 theory does not require proving that expression was copied, so it reaches conduct that a straight infringement claim would not.
"Cause: 17:1201 Digital Millennium Copyright Act"
How to check any of this yourself
Read the docket, not the tracker
Every case here is public and free to read on CourtListener by case number. The docket lists each filing in order, with the cause of action and the current status.
The tracker pages that rank for these searches are secondary summaries, and they disagree with each other on case status often enough that the primary record is worth the two minutes. Search the party name, open the docket, and read the most recent entries.
Docket pages are long lists of numbered entries, and copying one into a chat window usually loses the ordering that makes it readable. Converting the page to markdown keeps entry numbers and dates attached to their filings, which is the structure the whole document depends on.
Neither of these developments changes the law. What they change is the state of two cases: one now runs in both directions, and one has cleared its first procedural hurdle on a theory about access controls rather than copying. Both distinctions will matter more than the headlines, and both are checkable in a public record that takes longer to summarize than to read.
