Book authors v. Meta: Sheard, Older, Winspear, Reno and Hobbs

Four siblings of Levine, and one different case

This page groups five cases. Four were filed on 19 October 2026 by Stris & Maher and Freedman Normand Friedland, the same firms and the same three lawyers who filed Levine v. Meta that day. Our Levine page covers the shared allegations: the choice not to sue as a class, the four counts, Project Vellum, and the Meta admissions the complaints quote. We do not repeat that here. This page records what is the same across the five complaints, what differs, and what the fifth case, Hobbs, is.

ChatGPT Is Eating the World described the five 19 October filings as near identical and counted 292 book authors: Sheard 58, Older 57, Winspear 60, Reno 56 and Levine 61. Those five figures do add to 292 (our arithmetic). The next day it reported that the firms told Bloomberg Law they plan to sue Meta on behalf of 1,000 plaintiffs in the coming months.

The five cases side by side

How we counted. We counted the names in each caption and, separately, in ¶ 1 of each complaint, which lists every plaintiff. The two counts agree for every case. We then checked them against the parties section, which gives each plaintiff author one paragraph: Winspear ¶¶ 17-76, Older ¶¶ 17-73, Sheard ¶¶ 17-74, Reno ¶¶ 17-72 and Levine ¶¶ 17-75. Our counts match ChatGPT Is Eating the World’s for all five. The difference is only in labels. It calls all 292 “book authors”; two of Levine’s 61 plaintiffs are companies. So the five suits name 290 individual authors and two companies (our arithmetic). The four suits on this page name 231 people, all of them individuals. The four counts in each complaint carry the same titles. The models accused are the same in all five.

What we compared, and what differs

We took the text of each complaint and removed the line numbers, page headers and footers. We then split the text into numbered paragraphs. We compared everything outside the parties section (¶¶ 1-16, then jurisdiction through the prayer) against Levine. A line-by-line diff mostly showed footnotes landing at different points on the page, so we also compared the word counts in each complaint. Apart from the parties section, the five texts match. The only differences we found were punctuation: straight rather than curly quotation marks in a few places in Sheard, and one comma. No paragraph outside the parties section is added, dropped or reworded in any of the five.

Because each plaintiff author has one paragraph, the numbering shifts with the number of plaintiffs. The table maps the main allegations to their paragraphs in each complaint.

Does Winspear’s Count II take on Bartz?

We checked whether Winspear differs on the scanning claim. It does not. Count II in Winspear (¶¶ 169-178) has the same text as Count II in the other four. Its central sentence says Meta’s scans “were not a one-for-one change of format for Defendant’s own reading or reference” but “wholesale reproductions of entire works, made and retained in multiple copies” to build a commercial training corpus (Winspear ¶ 173). The same words appear in Older ¶ 170, Sheard ¶ 171, Reno ¶ 169 and Levine ¶ 172.

None of the five cites Bartz v. Anthropic in Count II. Each cites Bartz once, in footnote 71. That footnote supports an allegation that Meta, “like Anthropic,” kept pirated copies of works that were not tied to training, and cites Bartz for “Anthropic’s amassing of ‘a central library’” (Winspear ¶ 144 n.71; Levine ¶ 143 n.71). The Levine page explains why the “change of format” framing matters given Judge Alsup’s ruling on Anthropic’s scanning. That reading applies equally to all five complaints. Nothing in Winspear goes further.

Where the complaints differ: the plaintiffs

Each author paragraph follows one template. It gives the author’s state or country, lists their books, and says one or more of them are in named pirate libraries. It says there is “a reasonable inference” that Meta downloaded them, and that the books were sold in print while Project Vellum ran (for example Winspear ¶¶ 17, 40). What changes from suit to suit is the people, where they live, and which libraries are named.

These are our counts from the author paragraphs. “Living outside the U.S.” counts paragraphs that give a country other than the United States as the author’s residence. The non-U.S. countries named across the four new suits include Australia, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Japan, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, China. “Registration-title footnotes” counts footnotes that say a registration record has an error and give the correct title or co-author (for example Winspear nn. 3-5). Each paragraph lists libraries with the word “including,” so the Books3 column may not capture every book in Books3. All five complaints also carry the same footnote: where someone else is named as claimant on a registration, the plaintiffs say they are still the legal or beneficial owners (Winspear ¶ 77 n.6; Levine ¶ 76 n.6).

Hobbs v. Meta is a different case

The only Hobbs filing reviewed is a stipulation and order transferring venue. It was entered in the Southern District of New York and filed as Exhibit A to ECF 851 on the Kadrey docket on 6 October 2026. It shows:

• Parties. Jeff Hobbs, Alfred Douglas Stone and Thomas Dooley sue “on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated.” The defendants are Meta Platforms, Inc., Mark Zuckerberg and John Does 1-100 (caption).
• History. Hobbs and Stone filed on 22 May 2026, No. 1:26-cv-04314-PAE. An amended complaint adding Dooley was filed on 16 September 2026 (recitals).
• Transfer. All parties consented to transfer to the Northern District of California under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) “without waiver” of their positions on venue (recitals; ¶ 1). Judge Paul A. Engelmayer signed the order on 5 October 2026.
• Schedule. The order vacated the case management plan of 21 September 2026 and Meta’s 7 October response deadline (¶¶ 5-6). The parties are to propose a response date within 14 days after the case is docketed in California (¶ 7).
• Class rights preserved. Nothing in the order limits the plaintiffs or the putative class on relation, consolidation or coordination with other actions, or on appointment of interim class counsel under Rule 23(g) (¶ 8). Meta agreed not to oppose a request that Stone & Magnanini appear without local California counsel (¶¶ 3-4).

The order does not describe the claims, the works or the models at issue. We have not read the Hobbs complaint, so this page does not summarise it. ChatGPT Is Eating the World reported the transfer on 6 October, after the transfer of Elsevier v. Meta, and said it was likely to go to Judge Chhabria.

Relation to Kadrey v. Meta

All five complaints cite Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 3:23-cv-3417-VC (N.D. Cal.), for its 2025 opinion and for filings on its docket (for example Winspear ¶ 94 n.13). The Hobbs exhibit carries the Kadrey header, No. 3:23-cv-03417-VC. On 29 October 2026, ChatGPT Is Eating the World reported that Judge Chhabria had related Hobbs, Sheard and Older to Kadrey, so they will be reassigned to him. It said it expected the same for Winspear, Reno and Levine. We have not seen the relation order itself.