Cognella, Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

On 4 May 2026, Cognella, Inc., an academic publisher, filed suit against Meta Platforms, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that its copyrighted textbooks and learning materials were used without authorisation to train the Llama family of large language models.

The Complaint alleges that Meta obtained the works from shadow libraries including Books3, LibGen, Z-Library and Anna's Archive, redistributed them through torrenting protocols, and stripped copyright management information from them during preprocessing. Claims are brought under the Copyright Act of 1976 for direct and contributory infringement (17 U.S.C. § 501) and for removal of copyright management information (17 U.S.C. § 1202(b)(1)).

The Plaintiff seeks statutory and actual damages, disgorgement of profits, a permanent injunction and attorneys' fees, and has expressly elected to proceed individually rather than as a class action.

This summary is provided for educational and research purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Allegations described are those made in the filings. Please consult the underlying source documents.