The lawsuit, filed in New York state court on Wednesday, accuses NBC of "shamelessly" airing "falsehoods," including that Combs sexually assaulted minors — an allegation in the documentary that Combs says was "based entirely on a false claim by an anonymous interviewee."
Combs also says in the lawsuit that the documentary "maliciously" accuses him of murdering a series of rivals and close friends, including longtime partner Kimberly Porter, rappers Christopher "Biggie" Wallace, and Heavy D, given name Dwight Arrington Myers.
"In the Documentary, Defendants accuse Mr. Combs of horrible crimes, including serial murder and sexual assault of minors — knowing that there is not a shred of evidence to support them," the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also names Peacock TV and Ample Entertainment as defendants. Peacock, an NBC subsidiary, streamed the documentary, and Ample was the production company responsible for producing it.
Representatives for NBCUniversal didn't immediately return a request for comment by Business Insider. Ample couldn't immediately be reached.
The defendants worked together to "line their own pockets at the expense of truth, decency, and basic standards of professional journalism," the lawsuit says of the documentary, which first aired in January.
"As described in today's lawsuit, NBCUniversal Media, LLC, Peacock TV, LLC, and Ample LLC made a conscious decision to line their own pockets at the expense of truth, decency, and basic standards of professional journalism," Combs' attorney, Erica Wolff, said in a statement. "Grossly exploiting the trust of their audience and racing to outdo their competition for the most salacious Diddy exposé."
Combs is awaiting trial in Manhattan on federal charges including racketeering and sex trafficking. He has pleaded not guilty and has repeatedly denied allegations of sexual abuse in his criminal case and in multiple lawsuits accusing him of drugging and assaulting men and women over the past two decades.
The lawsuit Combs filed on Wednesday takes aim at portions of the documentary he says make false allegations against him, addressing each in strong language and lengthy detail.
Combs accuses the documentary of implying he had sex with minors — an allegation he says is based on a single interviewee who falsely claimed he saw two girls follow him into a room. The documentary includes the interviewee's "groundless speculation that 'for sure they were underage.'," the lawsuit says.
The allegation was likely "rehashed from a baseless lawsuit seeking $30 million," Combs' lawsuit says, in a reference to a February, 2024, lawsuit filed against the rapper by music producer Rodney Jones, Jr.
That lawsuit "has already been discredited by those adult women in their 30s referenced in that lawsuit who have come forward to say that they were adults at the time," Combs argues.
The rap entrepreneur takes special issue in his lawsuit with a suggestion in the documentary that Combs was responsible for Porter's death.
He calls Porter the mother to four of his children, his romantic partner for more than a decade, and "the love of his life." Porter died in 2018 at the age of 47 from lobar pneumonia.
"The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office has confirmed that her death was from natural causes and that there has never been any evidence of foul play," Combs' lawsuit says.
"The Documentary advances the false narrative that it cannot be a 'coincidence' that Ms. Porter and others in Mr. Combs's orbit have died, in a malicious attempt to insinuate that Mr. Combs murdered them."
Of Biggie — who died in a drive-by shooting in 1997 — Combs says in his lawsuit, "There has never been a hint of evidence to suggest that Mr. Combs was involved in the tragic murder of his friend."
Two other friends' deaths were addressed in the documentary — those of music executive Andre Harrell, who suffered heart failure in 2020, and Dwight Arrington Myers, a rapper and producer who had a fatal pulmonary embolism in 2011, Combs' lawsuit says.
People interviewed in the documentary, including Porter's ex Al B. Sure, speculate without evidence that Combs must have been involved with the deaths of Porter, Biggie, Harrell, and Myers, the lawsuit says.
"Defendants Ample and NBCU knew those statements were false or published them in reckless disregard for the truth," the suit says.
A judge on Monday found that President Donald Trump was flouting his order to pause a funding freeze.
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
A judge on Monday found Trump was flouting his order from last week that paused a spending freeze.
The judge ordered the administration to restore and resume the funding immediately.
The order was by the federal judge in Rhode Island overseeing a lawsuit brought by 22 states and DC.
The Trump administration is violating a federal court order by continuing to freeze funding for federal programs, a judge in Rhode Island found Monday.
In a sharply worded response, US District Judge John J. McConnell Jr., who's overseeing a lawsuit brought by 22 states and the District of Columbia, ordered the administration to immediately restore and resume the funding.
The order is the first major challenge after recent suggestions that if President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the Department of Government Efficiency's leader, Elon Musk, don't like what a judge orders, one option is to ignore it, Michel Paradis, who teaches constitutional law at Columbia Law School, said.
Over the past few days, Vance wrote on X, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," and Musk posted his support of an X user's suggestion that Trump openly defy the courts. Trump, meanwhile, said over the weekend that judges shouldn't be allowed to challenge recent DOGE actions.
"That's some tough language. The judge is not messing around," Paradis told Business Insider of Monday's order.
"It's return fire, to the extent that the Trump administration has declared that neither Congress nor the courts are allowed to question his authority," he added.
McConnell said his order was a response to evidence from the plaintiff states indicating that the pause on the freeze — which he said was causing "irreparable harm" and was "likely unconstitutional" — was being flouted.
"The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds," the judge wrote.
That evidenceincluded descriptions of funding to the plaintiff states still being disrupted, including money from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services, including funds for the Head Start program.
"The Defendants must immediately restore frozen funding" while the court weighs the states' claims and the government's arguments on behalf of the freeze, the judge wrote.
Trump's side quickly filed a notice with the court that it is appealing both the judge's original January 31 order and Monday's order.
Asked whether the Trump administration would comply with the latest order, a White House spokesperson responded by criticizing the legal challenges to the president's recent executive orders.
"Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful," Harrison Fields, the principal White House deputy press secretary, said.
"Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people," who elected Trump to "restore common-sense policies," he said.
Paradis said McConnell could find the defendants — who include Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — in contempt if his court order continues to be ignored.
Trump is also a defendant in the lawsuit. But holding a sitting president in contempt is a "constitutionally complex issue" and a "totally open question," Paradis said.
"There are plenty of people who say that just as you can't prosecute the president, you can't hold them in contempt because it creates a separation of powers problem," he said.
"But there's no question whatsoever that you can hold his subordinates, including Cabinet secretaries, very much in contempt of court and that he could do nothing about that," Paradis said of Trump. Contempt can be punishable by fines or jail as the judge sees fit, Paradis added.
February 10, 2025: This story was updated to include more details from the order and Trump's notice of appeal.
President Donald Trump and DOGE head Elon Musk have been hitting some legal obstacles.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Brandon Bell/Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
President Donald Trump's executive orders have faced a slew of legal roadblocks.
Judges have blocked orders on birthright citizenship, transgender inmate rehousing, and spending.
Trump's tariff plans for Canada and Mexico were paused after negotiations.
Some of President Donald Trump's boldest moves during his new administration's seismic first three weeks have been grounded before ever taking flight.
The administration and its Department of Governmental Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, the world's richest man, promised a list of swift-moving changes to the US government's operations. While some of those plans have progressed, others were put on hold, either in the courts or by the administration itself.
The White House says this is all part of a long game that Trump, ultimately, will win.
"Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful," Harrison Fields, the principal White House deputy press secretary, told BI on Friday.
And as for Trump's walked-back plans to hit our closest neighbors with tariffs — that was an all-out victory, said another White House spokesman, Kush Desai, who said Trump changed course on Mexico and Canada after "critical concessions" from both countries.
Still, much of Trump 2.0 remains on ice for now.
For those who haven't been able to keep up with the firehouse of actions announced by the White House and DOGE, here are the key ones that have been held up — for now.
A 'fork in the road' resignation offer
A federal judge in Massachusetts delayed Trump's plan to root out federal employees with buyout offers.
On January 28, the Trump administration gave just over two million government workers the chance to resign and maintain full pay and benefits until September 30. The so-called "fork in the road" resignation offer was a strategy straight out of Musk's playbook.
US District Judge George O'Toole Jr. on Thursday extended the buyout deadline until at least Monday, just hours before the actual deadline. The order came in response to a lawsuit brought by labor union groups. A Trump administration official told BI that over 40,000 federal workers had taken the buyout as of Wednesday.
Elon Musk runs the Department of Government Efficiency.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Musk's DOGE and the Treasury
The White House launched another fiscal bombshell on February 3 when Trump told reporters he had given Treasury data access to Musk, whose DOGE is tasked with cutting government spending.
The idea that DOGE would have access to the personal information of millions of Americans — including anyone who had ever paid taxes, taken a federal loan, or collected Social Security — resulted in another legal challenge.
On Thursday, a federal judge in California set strict interim limits on the Treasury data, banning DOGE from accessing it directly.
Then, Saturday morning, another federal judge temporarily blocked a slew of people — including special government employees (like Musk), political appointees, and government employees not assigned by the Treasury — from accessing the Treasury's payment systems. The judge also ordered those who had gained new access to the systems to destroy all copies they may have made of materials and records they downloaded.
In the order, US District Judge Paul Engelmayer cited the risk of "disclosure of sensitive and confidential information" and the "heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking."
A freeze on federal spending
On January 27 — the first full Monday of Trump 2.0 — Trump budget officials dropped a bombshell memo ordering the temporary freezing of "all federal financial assistance" beginning 5 p.m. the following day, so that the spending could be reviewed. In an instant, the future of billions of dollars in federal funding was thrown into question.
The shockwaves were just as swift, even in the hours before the freeze was to take place. Medicaid portals used by states to access federal reimbursement quickly shut down across the country. Head Start funds were frozen in some states. Officials in California wondered if FEMA wildfire assistance was at risk.
Judges presiding over two hastily-drafted lawsuits issued separate injunctions blocking the freeze, including a federal judge in DC whose order came down minutes before the 5 p.m deadline.
The next day, Matthew Vaeth, director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent out a second memo. It said that the first memo is no longer in effect.
China has imposed a series of tariffs on some US imports.
Yaorusheng/Getty Images
Backing off from tariff threats
Trump touted his plans to impose new 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and they were set to go into effect on Tuesday.
The announcements were met with retaliatory plans from both countries, where leaders said they'd enforce their own tariffs on American products.
The expected trade war rattled the markets. On Monday, stocks and crypto tumbled, while the US dollar and oil climbed.
In the end, though, these tariffs that left American investors scrambling were put on hold.
Trump and Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, struck a deal on border policy, delaying the expected tariff on Mexican imports for 30 days. Similarly, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau negotiated a pause until March for that set of tariffs.
A similar threat of 25% tariffs on goods from Colombia was put on hold after the country agreed to accept all deportation flights from the US.
An additional 10% tariff on imports from China did go into effect Tuesday, and was quickly matched by retaliatory tariffs on US exports to that country.
Bid to end birthright citizenship
Trump's executive order seeking to abolish the constitutional right of birthright citizenship has been indefinitely blocked by two separate federal judges.
A judge in Washington state issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the order on Thursday, just a day after a Maryland judge did the same. The order — one of the first signed by Trump after he was sworn into office — has been challenged in the courts by more than 20 Democratic-run states and immigrant rights advocates who have argued it violates the 14th Amendment.
Judge John Coughenour of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington temporarily halted the order on January 23, calling the move to end automatic citizenship to US-born children of parents who are in the country illegally "blatantly unconstitutional."
Coughenour issued his Thursday ruling following the decision by Maryland US District Judge Deborah Boardman. Boardman wrote that Trump's order "conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year-old binding Supreme Court precedent, and runs counter to our nation's 250-year history of citizenship by birth."
Dropping USAID into the 'wood chipper'
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing 2,200 USAID employees on paid leave.
The workers, some of whom are overseas, were set to go on leave just before midnight Friday.
Musk said in an X post on Monday that he had "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper."
The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, however, filed a lawsuit against the administration's USAID cuts on Thursday, arguing that the moves to dismantle it were made without congressional authorization.
Constitutional law experts told Business Insider that dismantling the agency without congressional approval is indisputably illegal.
Forcing transgender women inmates into men's prisons
Trump's Day One order to house transgender women into men's men's facilities at federal prisons has also been blocked in the courts.
The order says the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary shall "ensure that males are not detained in women's prisons" and calls to end gender-affirming care for transgender inmates. It was challenged in two lawsuits brought by a handful of transgender women in prison.
US District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, DC, granted the plaintiffs' request for a temporary restraining order on Tuesday. In his order, Lamberth wrote that the plaintiffs "have straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow" if the restraining order request was denied.
Lamberth's order followed a separate ruling by US District Judge George O'Toole in Massachusetts, who also issued a temporary restraining order on January 26.
Sam Altman has denied Elon Musk's claim that OpenAI bars investors from investing in competitors.
"That is false," Altman said Thursday in a sworn statement to a California judge.
He said investors were told only that they'd lose OpenAI data access if they invested in a rival.
Sam Altman has personally disputed an accusation now at the center of Elon Musk's federal racketeering lawsuit against him: Musk's claim that OpenAI investors must agree to a fund-no-competitor "edict."
"That claim is false," Altman said late Wednesday in a sworn declaration to the judge presiding over Musk's lawsuit, originally filed in February 2024.
The Tesla CEO and DOGE head is accusing Altman of colluding with Microsoft to unlawfully crush competition — including by barring OpenAI's outside investors from also investing in rival AI companies during a funding round that closed in the fall.
If approved by the judge, the injunction would ban OpenAI from forcing investors to agree not to invest in other AI companies and would freeze the tech giant's transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity.
"I did not tell any investor in the October 2024 funding round that their ability to invest in OpenAI was subject to that condition, nor to my knowledge did anyone else at OpenAI," Altman said in the page-long declaration.
There were indeed some restrictions, but those were limited and nothing like what Musk described,Altman told US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who hears cases in Oakland.
Investors who had ongoing access to confidential OpenAI information were told that access would be terminated "if they made non-passive investments in OpenAI's competitors," Altman told the judge.
"That restriction is necessary to protect against the misuse of OpenAI's competitively-sensitive information, and I understand it is industry standard for that reason," Altman's statement said.
Altman added that in explaining that limited restriction, he did not tell investors that they would lose the ability to invest in OpenAI if they chose to fund Musk's xAI or any other competitor.
Musk's claim that Altman, his colleague turned rival, was forcing OpenAI investors to agree to the investment ban was raised in detail during a hearing on the lawsuit held before Gonzalez Rogers on Tuesday.
The two men helped cofound OpenAI in 2015. Musk invested $44 million in the venture before their falling out three years later.
Alleging a violation of federal antitrust laws, Musk's attorney Marc Toberoff told the judge on Tuesday that OpenAI's high-value investors were required to agree to the investment ban as a condition of investing, and "not just in the latest funding round."
The Biden administration's Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission also said that such a ban would violate federal antitrust law, Toberoff said.
"OpenAI — already with 70% of the market, in conjunction with Microsoft — is seeking to strangle their competitors in the crib," he said.
Responding to Musk's claim at Tuesday's hearing, attorneys for Altman and Microsoft said OpenAI's investors were never told to boycott competitors.
In fact, Altman's attorney Sarah Eddy told the judge that there were investors who put money in both xAI and OpenAI.
"Some investors in OpenAI agreed that in the event they became non-passive investors or with governance rights in other competitors, they would cease getting certain confidential information from OpenAI. That is the agreement that's established by the evidence," Eddy told the judge.
The judge did not say when she expected to rule on the proposed injunction.
Altman and his codefendants — who include OpenAI, Microsoft, OpenAI's cofounder Gregory Brockman, and the billionaire LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman — are seeking a dismissal of the lawsuit. A hearing on those dismissal motions is set for May 28.
Attorneys for Musk and Altman said Tuesday that they'd be ready for trial by the end of 2026 at the earliest.
Correction: February 6, 2025— An earlier version of this story misstated when Elon Musk's lawsuit was originally filed. It was in February 2024, not March.
Former tech entrepreneur Charlie Javice is set to stand trial this month on fraud charges in Manhattan.
Mike Segar/ REUTERS/; Philip Pacheco/ Getty Images
The feds say Javice tricked JPMorgan Chase into paying $175M for her financial aid startup, Frank.
On Tuesday, a Manhattan judge set parameters for a February 18 criminal trial.
No one can mention Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, he ruled — unless Javice opens the door.
Charlie Javice — the young tech entrepreneur accused of tricking the nation's largest bank into paying $175 million for her college financial-aid startup — once had a lot to say about Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes.
Javice called Holmes' defrauded investors "sophisticated assholes," and complained that "investors should be blamed," according to a pair of WhatsApp messages that were discussed at a pretrial hearing in Manhattan on Tuesday.
When Javice and her ex-number two at their startup, Frank, go on trial for allegedly defrauding JPMorgan Chase later this month, federal prosecutors will be barred from making any mention of Theranos or Holmes, a judge ruled during the hearing.
And those WhatsApp messages between Javice and codefendant Olivier Amar, in particular, are definitely not coming into evidence, he said, unless either defendant opens the door by mentioning them on the witness stand.
"The potential for prejudice outweighs anything probative," US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said in precluding the use of the two messages that prosecutors had optimistically labeled "Government Exhibit 802."
A Manhattan judge on Tuesday barred federal prosecutors from using these WhatsApp messages as trial evidence against Charlie Javice later this month.
Southern District New York/Business Insider
The two WhatsApp messages are from 2022, "in the midst of their own efforts to defraud JPMC," the government alleged in court papers last week, in asking the judge to allow the "highly probative" texts into evidence at a trial scheduled to begin February 18.
Federal prosecutors allege that over months of negotiations, Javice and Amar repeatedly lied to Chase about the success of Frank, a for-profit tech company that Javice launched at age 24 and which featured software to help students apply for college financial aid.
Javice fraudulently claimed that Fank had 4.5 million customers, prosecutors allege, and created fake spreadsheets to trick the bank into believing they existed. She personally stood to gain $45 million in stock and salary from the deal, according to prosecutors.
"The government seeks only to offer the defendants' own statements about the defendants' own contemporaneous views about Holmes' criminal conduct, while in the midst of concealing the defendants' own criminal conspiracy," federal prosecutors wrote in asking last week for the judge's permission to use the WhatsApp messages as trial evidence.
In the messages, Javice and Amar are "calling the conviction 'dangerous,' and repeating many of the defenses they intend in their own case," prosecutors wrote.
That includes what prosecutors call a blame-the-victim defense.
"Investors should be blamed on letting a 19-year-old go rogue," Javice commiserated with Amar in the messages, referring to Holmes, who founded Theranos at age 19.
Perhaps most damagingly, the texts appear to show Javice drawing a distinction between a health-based fraud, like the one Holmes was convicted of, and a fraud based on financial aid.
"I think health is different," Javice tells her number two in the first of the two contested, and now stricken, WhatsApp messages.
"They talk about how she was unfairly treated," Assistant US Attorney Georgia V. Kostopoulos told the judge Tuesday, in her failed argument for admitting the messages.
"They say health is different" the prosecutor told the judge. "They're saying that it's different to lie about patients' health data than it is to lie about student data."
In their own court filings, defense lawyers for Javice and Amar had asked the judge to bar any mention at trial of "well-known, unrelated third parties convicted of fraud, specifically Elizabeth Holmes, Bernie Madoff, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Martim Skreli, which the government has signaled it intends to introduce in its case-in-chief."
Federal prosecutors say they have no intention of mentioning any of these infamous fradusters at trial.
Javice, who was once on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list, recently lost a bid to be tried separately from Amar. It was revealed at a court hearing last month that Amar plans to go on the offensive against Javice during the trial.
Both Javice and Amar have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit securities, wire, and bank fraud.
OpenAI has limited legal options if it wants to take DeepSeek to court.
picture alliance/dpa/Getty Images
OpenAI and the White House have accused DeepSeek of using ChatGPT to cheaply train its new chatbot.
Experts in tech law say OpenAI has little recourse under intellectual property and contract law.
OpenAI's terms of use may apply, but are largely unenforcible, experts say.
This week, OpenAI and the White House accused DeepSeek of something akin to theft.
In a flurry of press statements, they said the China-based upstart had bombarded OpenAI's chatbots with queries, hoovering up the resulting data trove to quickly and cheaply train a model that's now almost as good.
OpenAI is not saying if the company plans to pursue legal action, instead promising what a spokesperson termed "aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology."
But could they? Could they sue DeepSeek on "you stole our content" grounds, much like the grounds OpenAI was itself sued on in an ongoing 2023 copyright claim filed by The New York Times and other news outlets?
Business Insider posed this question to experts in technology law, who said challenging DeepSeek in the courts would be an uphill battle for OpenAI, now that the content-appropriation shoe is on the other foot.
OpenAI would have a hard time proving an intellectual property or copyright claim, these lawyers said.
"The question is whether ChatGPT outputs" — meaning the answers it generates in response to queries — "are copyrightable at all," said Mason Kortz of Harvard Law School.
That's because it's unclear that the answers ChatGPT spits out qualify as "creativity," he said.
"There's a doctrine that says creative expression is copyrightable, but facts and ideas are not," explained Kortz, who teaches at Harvard's Cyberlaw Clinic.
"There's a huge question in intellectual property law right now about whether the outputs of a generative AI can ever constitute creative expression or if they are necessarily unprotected facts."
Could OpenAI roll those dice anyway, and claim that its outputs actually are protected?
That would be unlikely, the lawyers said.
OpenAI is already on the record in the New York Times copyright case arguing that training AI is an allowable "fair use" exception to copyright protection.
If they do a 180 and tell DeepSeek that training is not a fair use, "that might come back to kind of bite them," said Kortz. "DeepSeek could say, 'Hey, weren't you just saying that training is fair use?'"
There's arguably a distinction between the Times and DeepSeek cases, Kortz adds.
"Maybe it's more transformative to turn news articles into a model" — as the Times accuses OpenAI of doing — "than it is to turn outputs of a model into another model" as DeepSeek may have done, Kortz said.
"But this still puts OpenAI in a pretty tricky situation with regard to the line it's been towing regarding fair use."
A breach of contract lawsuit is more likely
A breach-of-contract lawsuit is much likelier than an IP-based lawsuit, though it comes with its own set of problems, said Anupam Chander, who teaches technology law at Georgetown University.
The terms of service for Big Tech chatbots like those developed by OpenAI and Anthopic forbid using their content as training fodder for a competing AI model.
"So perhaps that's the lawsuit you might possibly bring — a contract-based claim, not an IP-based claim," Chander said.
"Not 'you copied something from me,' but that you benefited from my model to do something that you were not allowed to do under our contract."
There's a possible hitch, Chander and Kortz say. OpenAI's terms of service require that most claims be resolved through arbitration, not lawsuits. There's an exception for lawsuits "to stop unauthorized use or abuse of the Service or intellectual property infringement or misappropriation.
There's a larger hitch, though, experts say.
"You should know that the brilliant scholar Mark Lemley and a coauthor argue that AI terms of use are likely unenforceable," Chander said. He was referring to a January 10 paper, The Mirage of Artificial Intelligence Terms of Use Restrictions, by Stanford Law's Mark A. Lemley and Peter Henderson of Princeton University's Center for Information Technology.
To date, "no model creator has actually tried to enforce these terms with monetary penalties or injunctive relief," the paper says.
"This is likely for good reason: we think that the legal enforceability of these licenses is questionable," it says. That's in part because model outputs "are largely not copyrightable" and because laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act "offer limited recourse," it argues.
"I think they are likely unenforceable," Lemley told BI of OpenAI's terms of service, "because DeepSeek didn't take anything copyrighted by OpenAI, and because courts generally won't enforce agreements not to compete in the absence of an IP right that would prevent that competition."
Lawsuits between parties in different nations, each with its own legal and enforcement systems, are always tricky, Kortz said.
Even if OpenAI cleared all the above hurdles and won a judgment from a US court or arbitrator, "in order to get DeepSeek to turn over money or stop doing what it's doing, the enforcement would come down to the Chinese legal system," he said.
Here, OpenAI would be at the mercy of another extremely complicated area of law — the enforcement of foreign judgments and the balancing of individual and corporate rights and national sovereignty — that stretches back to before the founding of the United States.
"So this is, a long, complicated, fraught process," Kortz added.
Could OpenAI have protected itself better from a distilling incursion?
"They could have used technical measures to block repeated access to their site," Lemley said. "But doing so would also interfere with normal customers."
He added, "I don't think they could, or should, have a valid legal claim against the searching of uncopyrightable information from a public site."
Representatives for DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"We know that groups in the PRC are actively working to use methods, including what's known as distillation, to try to replicate advanced U.S. AI models," OpenAI spokesperson Rhianna Donaldson told BI in an emailed statement.
"We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more," the statement said. "We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology and will continue working closely with the US government to protect the most capable models being built here."
President Donald Trump holds up an executive order he has just signed.
Jim WATSON / AFP
Donald Trump's day one executive orders are facing court challenges.
Several lawsuits target his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Other lawsuits challenge his orders on birthright citizenship and firing federal workers.
President Donald Trump's executive orders — launched in a day one signing flurry — are being challenged by a similarly speedy blitz of lawsuits.
The lawsuits started to roll in on Monday within minutes of Trump being sworn into office for a second term. The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.
Elon Musk leads the Department of Government Efficiency.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency
The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency came under swift legal attack shortly after Trump signed an executive order formally creating the group that aims to slash wasteful federal spending.
Advocacy organizations and public interest groups quickly filed a handful of lawsuits in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against DOGE.
The law, which was designed to boost public accountability, covers advisory committees that are either formed or utilized by the president.
"Operating without complying with FACA, DOGE has already begun developing recommendations and influencing decision-making in the new administration, even though its membership lacks the fair balance required by FACA and its meetings and records are not open to public inspection in real time," one of the lawsuits, filed by the groups Public Citizen, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and the American Federation of Government Employees, reads.
The January 20 executive order establishing DOGE, however, does so in a way that reorganizes and renames an existing government agency, the United States Digital Service.
As a government department — and not an outside advisory group — it's also subject to public records laws.
Another lawsuit, filed by several groups including the American Public Health Association and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, contends that DOGE is a "shadow operation led by unelected billionaires who stand to reap huge financial rewards from this influence and access."
"Despite these conflicts of interest, DOGE is slated to dictate federal policy in ways that will affect millions of Americans, including those communities that Plaintiffs represent," the lawsuit says. "It is doing so under a shroud of secrecy with none of the transparency, oversight, or opportunity for public participation the law requires."
A fourth lawsuit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity against the Office of Management and Budget, seeks to compel the government agency to hand over records related to DOGE under the Freedom of Information Act.
"These records are important for the public to understand the threats to numerous environmental protections embodied in rules and orders and how, when, and under what circumstances the new administration intends to act on these threats," the lawsuit says.
On Tuesday, Musk, who was tapped by Trump to lead DOGE, made light of the lawsuits that have already been filed.
"Can someone start a lawsuit counter? How long until we hit triple digits?" Musk posted on his social-media platform X along with crying-while-laughing emoji.
Trump signed an executive order attempting to revoke birthright citizenship.
Getty Images
A ban on birthright citizenship
One of Trump's executive orders targets the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. The order bars federal agencies from issuing documents recognizing the citizenship of babies born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally.
Under the order, citizenship would also be denied to children of mothers who are visa holders or otherwise in the country temporarily and to those whose fathers are not citizens or lawful permanent residents of the US.
The order is set to take effect 30 days after its signing.
Hours after the signing ceremony, advocacy groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the order.
The lawsuit says the order conflicts with the 14th Amendment's provision that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
"This principle has enabled generations of children to pursue their dreams and build a stronger America," the lawsuit says.
The ACLU filed the suit in federal court in New Hampshire on behalf of New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Make the Road New York — groups with members whose children would be denied citizenship under the order.
The lawsuit names Trump and the departments of state, homeland security, and agriculture as defendants, along with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The heads of these agencies are also sued, though by title, not by name.
Another lawsuit was filed later on Monday in Boston on behalf of an unnamed expectant mother with temporary protective status whose child would be denied citizenship. Two Massachusetts support agencies, the Brazilian Worker Center and La Colaborativa, are fellow plaintiffs.
On Tuesday, 18 state attorneys general and the top law enforcement officers of Washington, DC, and San Francisco joined in suing Trump, the State Department, DHS, and the Social Security Administration to block the law from taking effect.
"The principle of birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years," the lawsuit says.
Weakening job protections for federal workers
Another of Trump's executive orders would weaken job protections for some of the more than 2 million federal employees who are career civil servants and who — unlike political appointees — can only be fired for cause.
The order carves out an exemption to this protection, shifting some 50,000 of these career civil servants into a new category called "Schedule F" that allows them to be fired at will. It's similar to an order Trump signed late in his first administration, which was quickly challenged in a lawsuit before being withdrawn by the Biden administration.
A lawsuit filed late on Inauguration Day by the National Treasury Employees Union — the same group that sued in 2020 — seeks to block the order.
"When establishing hiring principles, Congress determined that most federal government jobs be in the merit-based, competitive service," the lawsuit says. "And it established that most federal employees have due process rights if their agency employer wants to remove them from employment."
Trump is named the lead defendant in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, DC. The other named defendants include the heads of six government agencies: the Office of Personnel Management, US Customs and Border Protection, the IRS, the Treasury Department, Health and Human Services, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Last fall, stars assembled in London at the over-the-top clubstaurant Lavo to celebrate one of their own. Janet Jackson smiled in a velvet booth with Idris Elba. The supermodel Naomi Campbell, the evening's host, posed in a black dress.
At the center of it all was Sean "Diddy" Combs in a leather jacket and Cartier sunglasses cutting into a bright red cake featuring artwork from his latest release. It was the mogul's 54th birthday party, as well as a celebration of his "The Love Album." As far as partygoers and paparazzi could tell, he was on top of the world.
Since his rise to fame in the late 1990s as a rapper and producer, Combs had built a business empire and become one of the richest and most well-connected entertainers of all time.
Behind the scenes that November, though, Combs' life was about to start crumbling. Negotiations were failing between Combs and the R&B singer Cassie Ventura, his ex who was on the brink of going public with details of their relationship.
Exactly one week after his star-studded party, the tensions bubbling under the surface boiled over when Ventura sued Combs. The lawsuit alleged a cycle of physical abuse, as well as rape by Combs, who Ventura also said forced her to have sex with sex workers.
Combs' lawyers alleged that her lawyers tried to extort $30 million in exchange for stopping a tell-all book about their 10-year relationship last year.
He eventually apologized to Ventura after CNN released surveillance footage of him physically abusing her at a hotel in 2016. He settled the lawsuit and, at the time, denied any wrongdoing — a stance he has maintained amid a flurry of subsequent allegations — but it marked the beginning of a year that turned his world upside down.
Over the next 12 months, Combs went from being one of the richest music moguls in history, known for his wide network in the entertainment industry and business savvy, to being behind bars, facing a criminal indictment, dozens of civil lawsuits, and an empire in decline.
Combs' freedom, reputation, and finances are all in jeopardy. If he's found guilty of criminal charges, it would mean one of the most celebrated entertainers is also a heinous criminal.
"He looked like he was the king of the world — as flossy as possible, blinged out, with the family, and everything's good," Kenny Hull, a reality show director who worked on the second iteration of "Making the Band," which featured Combs, told Business Insider about the last time he saw Combs, a few years ago at a park in Los Angeles.
"From the top to the absolute bottom," he added. "Canceled and done."
Combs has vehemently and consistently denied all accusations of sexual assault and sex trafficking since Ventura's lawsuit was filed, and each time a new allegation has been made against him.
"Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone — man, woman, adult or minor," lawyers for Combs told BI.
A birthday behind bars
Sean "Diddy" Combs cutting a cake during a birthday party before his one at Lavo.
KMazur/WireImage
Combs celebrated his 55th birthday not at a luxe international club but at the notorious Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where, a person previously told BI, he was sharing a dormitory with the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
Instead of flowing Champagne or DeLeón, a jailhouse dinner was served on Combs' November birthday, consisting of Salisbury steak or black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, and green beans. There was no partying with A-listers, though he did receive a phone call from his kids.
Combs has been in jailpretrial sincehe was arrested in September, following a monthslong investigation that led to a grand jury indictment on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution for allegedly causing victims and paid sex workers to cross state lines.
The Bad Boy Records founder faces anywhere from 15 years to life in prison on a federal indictment alleging that for decades, he used violence, threats, and drugs to coerce women into sexual performances, including at elaborately planned, dayslong parties called "freak offs."
And more criminal charges may be coming, as prosecutors have said grand jurors are weighing a new indictment that could include allegations of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors allege that Combs has used phone accounts belonging to other people held at the jail to contact family members and associates and enlist them to plant negative stories about his accusers and funnel payments to a witness.
They also say agents recovered three AR-15 rifles with defaced serial numbers when search warrants were executed in March at Combs' homes in Miami and Los Angeles and at a Florida airport. And in September, when Combs was arrested at the Park Hyatt, a five-star hotel in midtown Manhattan, they recovered bags of pink powder that prosecutors said in September they believed contained ecstasy and other drugs. Prosecutors have not revealed the results of a drug test they said was conducted in September.
"No condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community," including of witnesses and prospective jurors, US District Judge Arun Subramanian wrote in the most recent bail denial, issued the day before Thanksgiving.
An avalanche of lawsuits
Attorney Marc Agnifilo represents Combs in his criminal case.
James Devaney/GC Images
Just two weeks after Combs was arrested and subsequently locked up at the Brooklyn jail, the Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee held a press conference to announce that his firm was representing 120 people accusingCombs of sexual misconduct.
"We are going to follow this evidence wherever it takes us. We will find the silent accomplices. We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors," Buzbee said of his legal offensive.
Since Ventura's bombshell November 2023 lawsuit, more than 30 civil lawsuits have been filed accusing Combs of sexual abuse, including about 20 from Buzbee's clients, all listed as John Doe or Jane Doe.
"It feels really good to know he's behind bars," Adria English, who is not a Buzbee client, told BI. She worked as a dancer at Combs' famous white parties and filed a lawsuit in July accusing him of sex trafficking. "What we're having to speak of already sounds like we're lying — it already sounds like a movie because it's so horrible," she said. "It's so disgusting."
Attorneys for Combs pointed BI to a statement previously released in response to English's lawsuit, saying in part: "No matter how many lawsuits are filed it won't change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted, or sex trafficked anyone."
The "I'll Be Missing You" rapper has been accused by both men and women of rape, sexual assault, and lacing drinks with drugs. Over half a dozen of the lawsuits allege the abuse of boys and girls between 10 and 17 years old. Four lawsuits allege that sexual attacks happened at Combs' famed A-list white parties throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, and two of those four lawsuits allege teenagers were victimized.
Timeline of events
Date
Event
November 16, 2023
Sean Combs is accused in a lawsuit of rape and abuse by the R&B singer Cassie Ventura, his ex-girlfriend.
November 28, 2023
Combs announces he has stepped down as chair of Revolt, the cable network and media company he cofounded.
November 2023 to February 2024
Five civil lawsuits are filed against Combs and his businesses.
January 16, 2024
Diageo and Combs end their more than 15-year partnership.
March 25, 2024
Federal officials raid Combs' Los Angeles and Miami mansions.
April 2024 to September 2024
Six more accusers, including Adria English, sue Combs, alleging various forms of drugging or sexual abuse.
May 17, 2024
CNN publishes surveillance footage that shows Combs physically abusing his then-girlfriend, Ventura.
September 16, 2024
Combs is arrested in Manhattan following an indictment by a grand jury on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty.
October 1, 2024
The Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee announces at a press conference that his firm is representing 120 accusers with sexual misconduct claims against Combs.
October 14, 2024
The first tranche of lawsuits that Buzbee pledged to bring against Combs is filed in New York.
November 4, 2024
Combs — who has remained behind bars at Brooklyn's notorious Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest — celebrates his 55th birthday.
Earlier this month, a woman accused the rapper Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, of raping her with Combs when she was 13 years old at a party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. An unnamed plaintiff originally filed the lawsuit in October, identifying Carter only as "Celebrity A."
Carter, in a statement through the X account of his entertainment company, Roc Nation, denied the allegations, calling them "heinous" and accusing Buzbee, the plaintiff's lawyer, of trying to "blackmail" him.
Attorneys for Combs continue to call all the lawsuits brought by Buzbee publicity grabs.
"Mr. Buzbee's lawsuit against Jay-Z and Mr. Combs and the recent extortion lawsuit Jay-Z brought against Mr. Buzbee exposes Mr. Buzbee's barrage of lawsuits against Mr. Combs for what they are: shameless publicity stunts, designed to extract payments from celebrities who fear having lies spread about them, just as lies have been spread about Mr. Combs," attorneys for Combs told BI Thursday.
The accuser in the lawsuit filed against Combs and Carter said in a recent interview with NBC News that there were some inconsistencies in her story but that she stood by the allegations.
Combs' lawyers are challenging the claims in at least seven lawsuits, which are ongoing. He has not respondedin court to the lawsuits brought by Buzbee, which were all filed after his arrest.
A Los Angeles entertainment attorney, Camron Dowlatshahi, who's not involved in the lawsuits against Combs, told BI that though the rapper is still considered wealthy, litigating each of these cases through trial and potentially being exposed to multimillion-dollar judgments "does not seem prudent."
"Each of the lawsuits piggy-back on the other, and witnesses will be plenty," Dowlatshahi, a partner at the law firm Mills Sadat Dowlat, said.
Dowlatshahi said that lawsuits typically settle before trial and that he anticipated the same in Combs' case.
"Diddy will have to be strategic, however, in which cases he settles first and for how much," Dowlatshahi said.
Down with Diddy's empire
Combs' ventures include his lifestyle brand, Sean John. He's seen here arriving at Saks Fifth Avenue to hand-deliver the Unforgivable fragrance in 2005.
Evan Agostini/Getty Images
As the allegations against Combs have piled up, so have his legal bills.
Combs was once estimated to be worth $820 million, according to Forbes. He'd created an assortment of lucrative revenue drivers that contributed to regular eight-figure annual paydays, including a deal with Diageo; his lifestyle brand, Sean John; a record label; and a music catalog.
One by one, those income streams have dried up.
When the civil lawsuits started, Combs was already engaged in a legal back-and-forth with Diageo, his most bankable partner.
Combs signed with the liquor giant in 2007, agreeing to be the face of Cîroc vodka in exchange for a cut of sales. The partnership became one of the most lucrative celebrity liquor deals in history, expanding further when Combs and Diageo launched DeLeón, a co-owned tequila line. Over 15 years, the company paid him nearly $1 billion, Forbes reported.
While Combs originally sued Diageo in May 2023, alleging the company did not support his ventures, the mounting sexual abuse lawsuits did him in, in the end.
"Mr. Combs is well-aware that these lawsuits make it impossible for him to continue to be the 'face' of anything," Diageo lawyers wrote in a letter to a judge in December 2023.
By January, the matter was resolved. Combs received $200 million for his stake in DeLeón tequila and not a penny for his longtime work with Cîroc.
It's a similar story for his other ventures.
Combs' lifestyle company, Sean John, had already slipped: In 2016, he sold a majority stake in the business, which at that point included fragrances and furnishings, to Global Brands Group for $70 million, Forbes reported. Just five years later, Global Brands Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and Combs bought back the business for $7.55 million, just over 10% of what it was once worth.
The clothing line's website has gone defunct, its Instagram scrapped, and it is no longer sold at Macy's, once the exclusive home of the brand's sportswear line — and one of its last remaining retailers. The department store, which was accused by one of Buzbee's clients of covering up a 2008 sexual attack by Combs, did not comment on whether the removal of his Sean John line had to do with the compounding lawsuits. Macy's didn't respond to the allegations of covering up a sexual assault in court or to a request for comment about them from BI.
The disintegration of Combs' entertainment businesses, though, was a direct reaction to his mounting legal problems.
Soon after Ventura filed her lawsuit, Combs stepped down as chair of Revolt, the cable network and media company he cofounded. By June, he'd given up his stake. A Hulu reality show that was supposed to follow Combs and his family was scrapped. Any chance of his being able to cash out and sell his music catalog is slim.
"There are so many lost opportunities," Clayton Durant, a professor who teaches music business at Long Island University's Roc Nation School, told BI in October. "There is no way a brand is touching Diddy — probably forever."
With no moneymaking on the table, Combs has taken to trying to sell the assets he does have.
Earlier this year, he listed his Los Angeles mansion in the tony Holmby Hills for $61.5 million. His private jet, LoveAir, is also listed for sale, and while he awaits a buyer, he's been renting it out.
It's not clear how much use he will have for it anyway, at least in the near future.
On the eve of Thanksgiving, Combs lost his third application to be freed on $50 million bail.
Subramanian ordered that he remain held pending his May 5 trial, citing the rap mogul's history of violence and of contacting and threatening prospective witnesses.
"Diddy's been the ultimate puppet master for the last 30 years, and people wanted to say something … they've been too afraid," English, the dancer who accused Combs in a lawsuit of sex trafficking, told BI. "But now because of the raids, everybody's about to be exposed, regardless, so it's going to come out."
