Anthropic quiere que OpenAI muestre su trabajo sobre publicaciones eliminadas de Reddit

Finding

Anthropic’s motion seeks records about OpenAI’s handling of Reddit deletion events, but the inspected filings do not establish that OpenAI failed to delete content or what its models can retain or reproduce.

How we verified

Methods: reverse engineering.

Reddit v. Anthropic: verified reporting leads Checked October 4, 2026 San Francisco Superior Court, CGC-25-625892

Lead worth pursuing

Anthropic asks court to make OpenAI disclose how it handles deleted Reddit posts.

The September 21 motion to compel targets OpenAI OpCo, LLC. Anthropic seeks further responses and production on 25 of the 34 requests in its June 16 subpoena. The hearing is listed for November 12, 2026, at 9 a.m., Department 302. The motion asks for production following a protective order and also requests sanctions against OpenAI. These are requested remedies; no ruling granting them appears in the docket inspected on October 4.

The most useful requests for the privacy story are Nos. 28-32:

28: Records of OpenAI's implementation of Reddit's Compliance API, including operational documentation and deletion-event logs or summaries. 29: Evidence of deletion or suppression across systems, datasets, products, and customer-facing outputs following Reddit deletion events. 30: Records of failures, outages, delays, backlogs, and technical limitations. 31: Records of third-party complaints or demands concerning failures to delete Reddit content. 32: Records addressing whether Reddit content can be removed or suppressed from models that have already been trained.

Why this matters: Anthropic argues that Reddit's privacy and interference claims depend on whether the guardrails imposed on licensed AI companies actually operate as Reddit describes. The requests would test that claim against the conduct and capabilities of Reddit's named licensee, OpenAI. This is a reporting interpretation of Anthropic's stated defense, not a finding that OpenAI has violated a deletion requirement.

Primary locations:

• Motion, PDF pages 13-14 (printed pages 12-13), and page 17 (printed page 16).
• Purcell declaration, Exhibit 1, PDF pages 14-15 (attachment pages 5-6).
• Separate statement, PDF pages 69-85 (printed pages 68-84), for the individual requests, objections and Anthropic's arguments concerning requests 28-32.

The subpoena standoff

Anthropic alleges that OpenAI has produced no documents and has not investigated the actual burden of responding. Purcell's declaration records Anthropic's account of an August 5 telephone conference; that account is not a transcript or OpenAI's own admission in a public statement.

OpenAI's position is available in actual letters attached to the declaration:

• September 9: OpenAI says material available from Reddit should be sought from the party first. For other material it wants a narrower scope and specific factual justifications. It says it remains open to reasonable production. PDF pages 60-61, Exhibit 7.
• September 14: OpenAI says Anthropic has not answered those questions and declines to agree to additional time on that basis. PDF page 66, Exhibit 9.
• September 18: OpenAI says Anthropic merely postponed some requests and did not narrow the remaining ones; it again declines an extension and says it will respond appropriately to a motion. PDF page 74, Exhibit 11.

The July 22 objections invoke relevance, burden, time scope, confidentiality, trade secrets, and, for certain requests, privilege or the availability of documents from Reddit. They are reproduced in Exhibit 4 and in the separate statement. The absence of a protective order was discussed by both sides.

Anthropic's September 16 letter postpones requests 3-6, 8, 18 and 24-26, leaving 25 requests pursued in the motion. It asks to extend its deadline to move to compel until December 9. PDF pages 68-72, Exhibit 10.

Additional angles within the same filing

1. Pre-license Reddit access: Requests 9-12 seek OpenAI's records of use before its first Reddit license, third-party datasets such as Pushshift or Common Crawl, authorization analyses, and the volume involved. Anthropic wants to test Reddit's account of licensed and unlicensed commercial use. These requests do not establish previously unknown unauthorized use by OpenAI. Original subpoena: declaration PDF page 13, attachment page 4.

2. Reddit data's economic value: Requests 1, 2, 7 and 13-17, 19-23, 27 seek internal valuations, alternative data sources, model use, benchmarks, revenue or engagement effects, and substitution costs. They could test Reddit's alleged licensing losses and illuminate what the data contributes to AI products. The subpoena does not disclose a new license price. Original subpoena: declaration PDF pages 12-14, attachment pages 3-5.

3. OpenAI's view of Claude: Requests 33-34 seek nonprivileged assessments of Anthropic/Claude and records of effects on OpenAI's business, products or licensing decisions. Anthropic argues these would test Reddit's asserted competitive injury. No such internal assessment is disclosed by the filing. Original subpoena: declaration PDF page 15, attachment page 6.

Latest case status from the live register of actions

The three October 1 entries state that the following matters were taken off calendar and are to be decided by a discovery referee:

• Anthropic's motion to compel Reddit's document production, Set One.
• Reddit's motion to compel Anthropic's interrogatory and document responses.
• Reddit's protective-order and electronic discovery protocol motion.

These entries name visiting Judge Harold E. Kahn and say the proceedings were reported. They do not identify the referee or supply the transcript. The OpenAI motion is separately listed for November 12. Do not infer from these entries that the OpenAI motion was also referred.

The September 18 docket entry records that the breach-of-contract, interference-with-contract and unfair-competition claims survived the demurrer; unjust enrichment and trespass to chattels were sustained with leave to amend. The September 17 entry continued the case-management conference to December 2, 2026, at 10:30 a.m., Department 610.

Novelty check and follow-up

RuntimeWire's live Reddit search, checked October 4, returns previous stories about Claude trade-secret protections and the postponed discovery hearing; it does not show a published story about these OpenAI deletion requests. The search covers headlines and summaries rather than every article's full text. A public r/redditstock post dated September 30 had already flagged the OpenAI motion and the valuation angle. Broad and targeted news searches found that post and unrelated cases, but no independent news story on the specific model-removal requests. This check does not establish exclusivity.

The distinct reporting opportunity is to obtain company responses explaining how Reddit's deletion obligations apply to already-trained models, what the Compliance API changes operationally, and whether OpenAI has now agreed to produce documents. The October 1 transcript could establish the referee's identity and the scope of the referral. No outreach or publication was performed in assembling this packet.

Source files

2026-09-21-anthropic-motion-to-compel-openai-10440979.pdf Court document 10440979; 19 PDF pages. 2026-09-21-anthropic-separate-statement-10440981.pdf Court document 10440981; 95 PDF pages. 2026-09-21-purcell-declaration-exhibits-10440982.pdf Court document 10440982; 74 PDF pages; original subpoena and correspondence. 2026-10-01-docket-discovery-referee.png Screenshot of the six October 1 entries, captured October 4 from the official case register. Three entries describe the referral; three are mini-minute entries.

The PDFs are unchanged downloads of publicly viewable court filings. Extracted .txt versions are included for search convenience; verify quotations and page references against the PDFs. PDF page numbers above count the cover. Ephemeral court-session links are omitted. Evidence-manifest.json records file sizes and SHA-256 hashes for the packet's contents.

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Reviewed the motion, declaration exhibits, separate statement and live register of actions, including OpenAI’s letters attached to Anthropic’s filing, to identify the requested records, parties’ stated positions and case status.

Reproduction

Reproduction does not apply to this reporting (document-driven).

Company response

The company was not contacted before publication.